h a bunch of her favorite
roses at her breast, is looking up at him, a little mocking smile upon
her lips. She is cold,--perhaps a shade amused,--without one particle
of sentiment.

"I fear nothing," cries Philip, in a low impassioned tone, made
unwisely bold by her words, seizing her hands and pressing warm,
unwelcome kisses on them; "whether I win or lose, I will speak now. Yet
what shall I tell you that you do not already know? I love you,--my
idol,--my darling! Oh, Molly! do not look so coldly on me."

"Don't be earnest, Philip," interrupts she, with a frown, and a sudden
change of tone, raising her head, and regarding him with distasteful
hauteur; "there is nothing I detest so much; and _your_ earnestness
especially wearies me. When I spoke I was merely jesting, as you must
have known. I do not want your love. I have told you so before. Let my
hands go, Philip; your touch is _hateful_ to me."

He drops her hands as though they burned him; and she, with flushed
cheeks and a still frowning brow, turns abruptly away, leaving him
alone,--angered, hurt, but still adoring.

Ten minutes later, her heart--a tender one--misgives her. She has been
unjust to him,--unkind. She will return and make such reparation as
lies in her power.

With a light step she returns to the tea-room, where she left him, and,
looking gently in, finds he has neither stirred nor raised his head
since her cruel words cut him to the heart. Ten minutes,--a long
time,--and all consumed in thoughts of her! Feeling still more
contrite, she approaches him.

"Why, Philip," she says, with an attempt at playfulness, "still
enduring 'grinding torments?' What have I said to you? You have taken
my foolish words too much to heart. That is not wise. Sometimes I
hardly know myself what it is I have been saying."

She has come very near to him,--so near that gazing up at him
appealingly, she brings her face in dangerously close proximity to his.
A mad desire to kiss the lips that sue so sweetly for a pardon fills
him, yet he dares not do it. Although a man not given to self-restraint
where desire is at elbow urging him on, he now stands subdued,
unnerved, in Molly's presence.

"Have I really distressed you?" asks she, softly, his strange silence
rendering her still more remorseful. "Come,"--laying her hand upon his
arm,--"tell me what I have done."

"'Sweet, you have trod on a heart,'" quotes Philip, in so low a tone as
to be almost unheard. He crosses