Not a syllable," says Molly. "Though even if I did you will forgive
me, won't you? You always do forgive me, don't you?"

It would be impossible to describe the amount of pleading, sauciness,
coaxing she throws into the "won't you?" and "don't you?" holding up
her face, too, and looking at him out of half-shut, laughing, violet
eyes.

"I suppose so," he says, smiling. "So abject a subject have I become
that I can no longer conceal even from myself the fact that you can
wind me round your little finger."

He tightens his arm about her, and considering, I dare say, she owes
him some return for so humble a speech--stoops as though to put his
lips to hers.

"Not yet," she says, pressing her fingers against his mouth. "I have
many things to say to you yet before---- For one, I am not a coquette?"

"No."

"And you are not going abroad to--forget me? Oh, Teddy!"

"If I went to the world's end I could not compass that. No, I shall not
go abroad now."

"And"--half removing the barring fingers--"I am the dearest, sweetest,
best Molly to be found anywhere?"

"Oh, darling! don't you know I think so?" says Luttrell, with
passionate fondness.

"And you will never forgive yourself for making me so unhappy?"

"Never."

"Very well,"--taking away her hand, with a contented sigh,--"now you
may kiss me."

So their quarrel ends, as all her quarrels do, by every one being in
the wrong except herself. It is their first bad quarrel; and although
we are told "the falling out of faithful friends is but the renewal of
love," still, believe me, each angry word creates a gap in the chain of
love,--a gap that widens and ever widens more and more, until at length
comes the terrible day when the cherished chain falls quite asunder. A
second coldness is so much easier than a first!

CHAPTER XVII.

"One silly cross
Wrought all my loss.
O frowning fortune!"

--_The Passionate Pilgrim._

It was an unfortunate thing,--nay, more, it was an unheard-of thing
(because for a man to fall in love with his own wife has in it all the
elements of absurdity, and makes one lose faith in the wise saws and
settled convictions of centuries),--but the fact remained. From the
moment Sir Penthony Stafford came face to face with his wife in the
corridor at Herst he lost his heart to her.

There only rested one thing more to make the catastrophe complete, and
that also came to pass: Cecil was fully and entirely aware o