"The bullet. The one you were wounded with for my sake. I am told you put it in your pocket; and I see something bulge in your waistcoat; that bullet belongs to me now."
"I think you are a witch," said he. "I do carry it about next my heart. Take it out of my waistcoat, if you will be so good."
She blushed, and declined, and with the refusal on her very lips, fished it out with her taper fingers. She eyed it with a sort of tender horror. The sight of it made her feel faint a moment. She told him so: and that she would keep it to her dying day. Presently her delicate finger found something was written on it; she did not ask him what it was, but withdrew, and examined it by her candle. Griffith had engraved it with these words:
"I LOVE KATE."
He looked through the window, and saw her examine it by the candle. As she read the inscription, her face, glorified by the light, assumed a celestial tenderness he had never seen it wear before.
She came back and leaned eloquently out as if she would fly to him.
"Ah, Griffith! Griffith!" she murmured; and, somehow or other, their lips met in spite of all the difficulties, and grew together in a long and tender embrace.
It was the first time she had ever given him more than her hand to kiss; and the rapture repaid him for all.
But, as soon as she had made this great advance, virginal instinct suggested a proportionate retreat.
"You must go to bed," she said, austerely; "you will catch your death of cold out here."