"What an uncivil speech! Do I come too often?" He has her hand in his, and is holding it inquiringly, but it is such a soft and kind inquiry.
"Not half often enough," she says, and hardly knows why his face flushes at her words, being still ignorant of the fact that he loves her with a love that passeth the love of most.
"Well, you sha'n't have to complain of that any longer," he says, gayly. "Shall I take up my residence here?"
"Do," says Miss Peyton, also in jest.
"I would much rather you took up yours at Scrope," he says, unthinkingly, and then he flushes again, and then silence falls between them.
Her foot is tapping the sward lightly, yet nervously. Her eyes are on the "daisies pied." Presently, as though some inner feeling compels her to it, she says,—"Why do you never speak to me of—Horace?"
"You forbade me," he says: "how could I disobey you? He is well, however, but, I think, not altogether happy. In his last letter, to me he still spoke remorsefully of—her." It is agony to him to say this, yet he does it bravely, knowing it will be the wisest thing for the woman he himself loves.
"Yes," she says, quite calmly. At this instant she knows her love for Horace Branscombe is quite dead. "Her death was terrible."
"Yet easy, I dare say. Disease of the heart, when it carries one off, is seldom painful. Clarissa, this is the very first time you have spoken of her, either."
"Is it?" She turns away from him, and, catching a branch, takes from it a leaf or two. "You have not spoken to me," she says.