He was very clever, this Cecil Laurens, and at that moment he read the heart of the simple girl as he had read his own as by a flash of light. Smilingly, and with a man’s masterful air, he returned:
“It is my turn now to cry out nonsense, my darling, for I do not believe that my love is hopeless. I saw in your sweet, shy eyes just now a tenderness that belonged not to ‘some one else,’ but to me. Look up, Louise, and own that in these weeks while we seemed to be playing at cross purposes we were falling headlong into love!”
She tried to deny it, but the usually pert little tongue faltered under his quizzical and tender gaze.
“Let me alone!” she began frantically, but Cecil Laurens’ arms had slipped around her waist and he smothered the remonstrating words on her lips with a long, sweet, lingering, lover’s kiss—one that seemed to draw the girl’s pure soul from her body and merge it into his.
Faint with the sweetness of this exquisite emotion, Molly rested passive in his clasp for a moment, then drawing back from him, sighed bitterly.
“Oh, this is dreadful! Why did I ever come to Ferndale?” she exclaimed to herself, while Cecil Laurens’ eyes glowed upon her full of passionate love. Under their warmth, the girl hung her head bashfully, all her usual effrontery conquered by the thrilling consciousness of her love and the bitter pain she suffered in her secret knowledge of its folly.
“Ah, if he but knew!” she thought with an inward shudder, and looking up at him with eyes full of pain, she said:
“I did not try to make you love me, you must always remember that!”
He laughed as he answered:
“No, you did not court my love, dear, certainly. I never saw a rose so full of thorns as this one that I have won.”