"They cannot have missed us yet; it is too soon."
"Soon! Why, it must be hours since we came out here," says Molly, with uplifted brows.
"Have you found it so very long?" asks he, aggrieved.
"No,"—resenting his tone in a degree,—"I have not been bored to death, if you mean that; but I am not so dead to the outer world that I cannot tell whether time has been short or long. And it is long," viciously.
"At that rate, I think we had better go in," replies he, somewhat stiffly.
As they draw near the house, so near that the lights from the open drawing-room windows make yellow paths across the grass that runs their points almost to their feet,—Luttrell stops short to say:
"Shall I speak to John to-night or to-morrow morning?"
"Oh! neither to-night nor to-morrow," cries Molly, frightened. "Not for ever so long. Why talk about it at all? Only a few minutes ago nothing was farther from my thoughts, and now you would publish it on the house-tops! Just think what it will be to have every one wondering and whispering about one, and saying, 'Now they have had a quarrel,' and 'Now they have made it up again.' Or, 'See now she is flirting with somebody else.' I could not bear it," says Molly, blind to the growing anger on the young man's face as he listens to and fully takes in the suggestions contained in these imaginary speeches; "it would make me wretched. It might make me hate you!"
"Molly!"
"Yes, it might; and then what would you do? Let us keep it a secret," says Molly, coaxingly, slipping her hand into his, with a little persuasive pressure. "You see, everything about it is so far distant; and perhaps—who knows?—it may never come to anything."