eces, "it is impossible
you can have so soon forgotten. Think of all the happy days at
Brooklyn, all the vows we interchanged. Is there inconstancy in the
very air at Herst?"

His words are full of entreaty, his manner is not. There is an acidity
about the latter that irritates Molly.

"All Irish people are fickle," she says recklessly, "and I am
essentially Irish."

"All Irish people are kind-hearted, and you are not so," retorts he.
"Every hour yields me an additional pang. For the last two days you
have avoided me,--you do not care to speak to me,--you----"

"How can I, when you spend your entire time upbraiding me and accusing
me of things of which I am innocent?"

"I neither accuse nor upbraid; I only say that----"

"Well, I don't think you can say much more,"--maliciously,--"because--I
see Philip coming."

He has taken her hand, but now, stung by her words and her evident
delight at Shadwell's proximity, flings it furiously from him.

"If so, it is time I went," he says, and turning abruptly from her,
walks toward the corner that must conceal him from view.

A passing madness seizes Molly. Fully conscious that Luttrell is still
within hearing, fatally conscious that it is within her power to wound
him and gain a swift revenge for all the hard words she chooses to
believe he has showered down on her, she sings,--slightly altering the
ideas of the poet to suit her own taste,--she sings, as though to the
approaching Philip:

"He is coming, my love, my sweet!
Was it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would know it and beat,
Had it lain for a century dead."

She smiles coquettishly, and glances at Shadwell from under her long
dark lashes. He is near enough to hear and understand; so is Luttrell.
With a suppressed curse the latter grinds his heel into the innocent
gravel and departs.

CHAPTER XVI.

"Love is hurt with jar and fret,
Love is made a vague regret,
Eyes with idle tears are wet."

--_The Miller's Daughter._

It is evening; the shadows are swiftly gathering. Already the
dusk--sure herald of night--is here. Above in the trees the birds are
crooning their last faint songs and ruffling their feathers on their
night-perches.

How short the days have grown! Even into the very morning of sweet
September there has fallen a breath of winter,--a chill, cold breath
that tells us summer lies behind.

Luttrell, with downcast eyes and embittered heart, tr