e one singled out to escort you here, to bear your messages
there. Now and again you threw me flowers, not half so honeyed as your
smiles. And when you had rendered me half mad--nay, I think wholly
so--for love of you, and I asked you to be my wife, you asked me in
return 'what I meant,' pretending an innocent ignorance of having done
anything to encourage me."

"I do not think I have done all this," says Molly, with a little
gasping sigh; "but if I have I regret it. I repent it. I pray your
forgiveness."

"And I will grant it on one condition. Swear you will be my wife."

She does not answer. He is so vehement that she fears to provoke him
further; yet nothing but a decided refusal can be given. She raises her
head and regards him with a carefully-concealed shudder, and as she
does so Luttrell's fair, beautiful face--even more true than beautiful,
his eyes so blue and earnest, his firm but tender mouth--rises before
her. She thinks of his devotion, his deep, honest love, and without
thinking any further she says, "No," with much more decided emphasis
than prudence would have permitted.

"'No!'" repeats he, furiously. "Do you still defy me? Are you then so
faithful to the memory of the man who cast you off? Have you, perhaps,
renewed your engagement with him? If I thought that,--if I was sure of
that---- Speak, and say if it be so."

The strain is too great. Molly's brave heart fails her. She gives a
little gasping cry, and with it her courage disappears. Raising her
face in mute appeal to the bare trees, to the rushing, comfortless
wind, to the murky sky, she bursts into a storm of tears.

"Oh, if my brother were but alive," cries she, in passionate protest,
"you would not dare treat me like this! Oh, John, John, where are you?
It is I, your Molly Bawn. _Why_ are you silent?"

Her sobs fall upon the chilly air. Her tears drop through her fingers
down upon the brown-tinged grass, upon a foolish frozen daisy that has
outlived its fellows,--upon her companion's heart!

With a groan he comes to his senses, releases her, and, moving away,
covers his face with his hands.

"Don't do that," he says. "Stop crying. What a brute I am! Molly,
Molly, be silent, I desire you. I am punished enough already."

Hardly daring to believe herself free, and dreading a relapse on
Philip's part, and being still a good deal over-strung and frightened,
Miss Massereene sobs on very successfully, while even at this moment
secretly rep