The sketching of this day was somewhat protracted, and Sybil became aware that their eyes sought each other with an interest she had never felt before in those of a stranger, and that each time they so met, her pulses quickened and her cheek flushed or grew pale. Whence was this emotion? she whispered in her heart.
"I shall often think of this moorland tarn, when I am far away," said the officer.
"You leave this soon, then?" she remarked.
"Yes; I am, ere long, going back to India."
"My brother Denzil has gone there to join his regiment."
Had the stranger asked the almost inevitable military question, "What regiment?" a little discovery might have been made; but he was full of the girl's beauty, and thought of that only. Something of admiration or of ardour in his eyes inspired her with confusion, and abruptly closing her book as on the preceding day, she rose from the bank on which she had been seated, and said, with a little trepidation,
"I am going now, and—and here our sketching and meetings must end."
"Ah! why?"
"I fear," she stammered as she spoke, aware that her speech was full of awkwardness—"I fear that I have done wrong in—in——"
"What?"