pting me, and"--a soft glance stealing to
him from beneath her lashes--"I should _like_ to see you, of course, but
so much duty I owe to her."

"Your first duty is to your husband," responds he, gravely.

She turns to him with startled eyes.

"Who is that?" she asks.

"I am," boldly; "or at least I soon shall be: it is all the same."

"How sure you are of me!" she says, with just the faintest touch of
offence in her tone that quickens his pulses to fever-heat.

"_Sure!_" he says, with a melancholy raised by passion into something
that is almost vehemence. "Was I ever so _unsure_ of anything, I wonder?
There is so little certainty connected with you in my mind that half my
days are consumed by doubts that render me miserable! Yet I put my trust
in you. Upon your sweetness I build my hope. I feel you would not
willingly condemn any one to death, and what could I do but die if you
now throw me over? But you _won't I think_."

"No, no," says Monica, impulsively, tears in her eyes and voice.
Tremblingly she yields herself to him, and let him hold her to his heart
in a close embrace. "How could you think that of me? Have you forgotten
that I _kissed_ you?"

Plainly she lays great stress upon that rash act committed the other
night beneath the stars.

"_Forget it!_" says Desmond, in a tone that leaves nothing to be
desired. "You are mine, then, now,--now and forever," he says,
presently.

"But there is always Aunt Priscilla," says Monica, nervously. Her tone
is full of affliction. "Oh, if she could _only_ see me now!"

"Well, she _can't_, that's one comfort; not if she were the hundred-eyed
Argus himself."

"I feel I am behaving very badly to her," says Monica, dolorously. "I
am, in spite of myself, deceiving her, and to-morrow, when it is all
over,----"

"It shan't be over," interrupts he, with considerable vigor. "What a
thing to say!"

"I shall feel _so_ guilty when I get back to Moyne. Just as if I had
been doing something dreadful. So I have, I think. How shall I ever be
able to look her in the face again?"

"Don't you know? It is the simplest thing in the world. You have only to
fix your eyes steadily on the tip of her nose, and there you are!"

This disgraceful frivolity on the part of her lover rouses quick
reproach in Monica's eyes.

"I don't think it is a nice thing to laugh at one," she says, very
justly incensed. "I wouldn't laugh at _you_ if you were unhappy. You are
not the least help to me