t you last night," was her reply. "I pretended," she
hesitated, "I pretended to have met you long ago, and spoken to you of
him. It was not true; but I could not help myself without betraying you,
and you had put me in a difficulty. He praised you highly."

"And--you may permit me one question--does this danger come from
Northmour?" I asked.

"From Mr. Northmour?" she cried. "Oh, no; he stays with us to share it."

"While you propose that I should run away?" I said. "You do not rate me
very high."

"Why should you stay?" she asked. "You are no friend of ours."

I know not what came over me, for I had not been conscious of a similar
weakness since I was a child, but I was so mortified by this retort
that my eyes pricked and filled with tears, as I continued to gaze upon
her face.

"No, no," she said, in a changed voice; "I did not mean the words
unkindly."

"It was I who offended," I said; and I held out my hand with a look of
appeal that somehow touched her, for she gave me hers at once, and even
eagerly. I held it for a while in mine, and gazed into her eyes. It was
she who first tore her hand away, and, forgetting all about her request
and the promise she had sought to extort, ran at the top of her speed,
and without turning, till she was out of sight. And then I knew that I
loved her, and thought in my glad heart that she--she herself--was not
indifferent to my suit. Many a time she has denied it in after days, but
it was with a smiling and not a serious denial. For my part, I am sure
our hands would not have lain so closely in each other if she had not
begun to melt to me already. And, when all is said, it is no great
contention, since, by her own avowal, she began to love me on the
morrow.

And yet on the morrow very little took place. She came and called me
down as on the day before, upbraided me for lingering at Graden, and,
when she found I was still obdurate, began to ask me more particularly
as to my arrival. I told her by what series of accidents I had come to
witness their disembarkation, and how I had determined to remain, partly
from the interest which had been wakened in me by Northmour's guests,
and partly because of his own murderous attack. As to the former, I fear
I was disingenuous, and led her to regard herself as having been an
attraction to me from the first moment that I saw her on the links. It
relieves my heart to make this confession even now, when my wife is with
God, and already kn