i was quick to see
that here was the opportunity she sought to conceal her wonderful,
presumptuous dream.

For she was in love--she knew it now--wildly, deliriously, gloriously in
love with Owen. To her he was the embodiment of all that was most noble,
most god-like in man. His voice was music, his commands gifts, his rare
vexation as the frown of Jove. She trembled and turned pale at his
footstep, and when he spoke to her suddenly her heart throbbed and her
colour came and went until she felt as though he must observe her
emotion.

In a word, she was in love; and when it is remembered that on one side
of her Toni was purely of the South--the glowing, ardent, passionate
South--it is not to be wondered at that this new emotion dominated her
whole being to the exclusion of all else.

Her love, indeed, was pathetic in its young ignorance. Anyone could have
told her that she was wasting her treasure, that it was the act of a
fool to pour out her priceless gift at the feet of one who did not want
it, who would consider it a mere presumption.

Her place in Owen's life was that of a servant, a subordinate; and her
common sense should have told her that in that light alone would Owen
inevitably behold her. Vaguely she realized this--knew well enough that
he never thought of her save as his more or less useful secretary, but
after all, she could not be expected to reason out this thing too
closely. Its very vagueness, indeed, lent it charm. Her love was veiled,
as it were, in a most delicate, most diaphanous mist, which took from it
all earthliness, and left it intangible, magical as some gift from
fairyland. So far, no hint of desire had entered into it. It was all
unselfish, girlish adoration, an almost childish reverence for one
immeasurably her superior; and though she made her new dress and
adjusted her little bits of muslin and lace with scrupulous care, it was
not so much in the hope that she might find favour in Owen's eyes as in
the personal longing to make herself more worthy of the love within her.

It never entered her head that Owen would suspect her secret. Indeed,
the whole affair was so dream-like, of so unsubstantial, so gossamer a
lightness, that merely to speculate upon her romance would have been to
shatter it, as one might put a finger through a fairy cobweb.

She loved--and at present that was enough. To be with Owen daily, to sit
in the same room, breathe the same air, obey his wishes, help him with