'Yes,' said Mary, sweetly and simply; 'but do not offend me again.'
And bright though the sunny landscape around her, it seemed for a moment to grow brighter to her eyes, and her pulses quickened, for she felt a thrill at the tone of his voice and the expression of his eyes. She felt too, somehow, as if the world would never seem quite the same to her afterwards; and with this was blended an emotion of pain that these feelings were excited in her breast aimlessly and uselessly by the affianced of another!
It was almost a relief to her when he laughed, and, breaking the silence of a full minute or so, said,
'Now, I am about to rival your sister, Miss Ellinor, in the achievement of something artistic,' and, opening a pocket-knife, he proceeded to carve on the fine smooth bark of a tree that overshadowed the rustic sofa the letters 'M.W.'
'My initials,' said Mary, watching his work.
'Yes.'
'I don't think Lord Dunkeld will thank you for injuring his timber thus.'
'I don't care about Dunkeld's timber. I've a good mind to be like that fellow in Shakespeare—what's his name?—Orlando, and
"Carve on every tree
The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she."
Queer phrase that—means inexpressible, I suppose. See!' he added, as he quickly cut three other initials beside Mary's—L.W.C.—and the date.