MOLLY BAWN

By

THE DUCHESS
(Margaret Wolfe Hamilton)

Author of "Phylis," "Airy Fairy Lilian," "Portia," Etc,. Etc.

NEW YORK
HURST AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was not printed in this book. It has been created for the convenience of the reader.

CONTENTS

MOLLY BAWN.

[ ]

CHAPTER I.

"On hospitable thoughts intent."

"Positively he is coming!" says Mr. Massereene, with an air of the most profound astonishment.

"Who?" asks Molly, curiously, pausing with her toast in mid-air (they are at breakfast), and with her lovely eyes twice their usual goodly size. Her lips, too, are apart; but whether in anticipation of the news or of the toast, it would be difficult to decide. "Is any one coming here?"

"Even here. This letter"—regarding, with a stricken conscience, the elegant scrawl in his hand—"is from Tedcastle George Luttrell (he is evidently proud of his name), declaring himself not only ready but fatally willing to accept my invitation to spend a month with me."

"A month!" says Molly, amazed. "And you never said a word about it, John."

"A month!" says Letitia, dismayed. "What on earth, John, is any one to do with any one for a month down here?"

"I wish I knew," replies Mr. Massereene, getting more and more stricken as he notices his wife's dejection, and gazing at Molly as though for inspiration. "What evil genius possessed me that I didn't say a fortnight? But, to tell you the honest truth, Letty, it never occurred to me that he might come."

"Then why did you ask him?" says Letitia, as sharply as is possible for her. "When writing, you might have anticipated so much: people generally do."

"Do they?" says Mr. Massereene, with an irrepressible glance at Molly. "Then you must only put me down as an exception to the general rule. I thought it only civil to ask him, but I certainly never believed he would be rash enough to go in for voluntary exile. I should have remembered how unthinking he always was."

"But who is he?" asks Molly, impatiently, full of keen and pleasurable excitement. "I die of vulgar curiosity. What is he like? Is he young, handsome? Oh, John, do say he is young and good-looking."

"He was at school with me."

"Oh!" groans Molly.

"Does that groan proceed from a conviction that I am in the last stage of decay?" demands Mr. Massereene. "Anything so rude as you, Molly, has not as yet been rivaled. However, I am at a disadvantage: so I forgive, and will proceed. Though at school with me, he is at least nine years my junior, and can't be more than twenty-seven."

"Ah!" says Molly. To an Irish girl alone is given the power to express these two exclamations with proper effect.

"He is a hussar, of a good family, sufficiently good looks, and, I think, no fortune," says Mr. Massereene, as though reading from a doubtful guide-book.

"How delightful!" says Molly.

"How terrific!" sighs Letitia. "Fancy a hussar finding amusement in lambs, and cows, and fat pigs, and green fields!"

"'Green fields and pastures new,'" quotes Mr. Massereene. "He will have them in abundance. He ought to be happy, as they say there is a charm in variety."

"Perhaps he will find some amusement in me," suggests Molly, modestly. "Can it be possible that he is really coming? Oh, the glory of having a young man to talk to, and that young man a soldier! Letitia," to her sister-in-law, "I warn you it will be no use for you to look shocked, because I have finally made up my mind to flirt every day, and all day long, with Tedcastle George Luttrell."

"Shocked!" says Letitia, gravely. "I would be a great deal more shocked if you had said you wouldn't; for what I should do with him, if you refused to take him in hand, is a thing on which I shudder to speculate. John is forever doing questionable things, and repenting when it is too late. Unless he means to build a new wing—" with a mild attempt at sarcasm,—"I don't know where Mr. Luttrell is to sleep."

"I fear I would not have time," says Massereene, meekly; "the walls would scarcely be dry, as he is coming—the day after to-morrow."

"Not until then?" says Letitia, ominously calm. "Why did you not make it to-day? That would have utterly precluded the possibility of my getting things into any sort of order."

"Letitia, if you continue to address me in your present heartless style for one minute longer, I shall burst into tears," says Mr. Massereene. And then they all laugh.

"He shall have my room," says Molly, presently, seeing that perplexity still adorns Letitia's brows, "and I can have Lovat's."

"Oh, Molly, I will not have you turned out of your room for any one," says Letitia; but she says it faintly, and is conscious of a feeling of relief at her heart as she speaks.

"But indeed he shall. It is such a pretty room that he cannot fail to be impressed. Any one coming from a hot city, and proving insensible to the charms of the roses that are now creeping into my window, would be unfit to live. Even a hussar must have a soft spot somewhere. I foresee those roses will be the means of reducing him to a lamb-like meekness."

"You are too good, Molly. It seems a shame," says Letitia, patting her sister-in-law's hand, and still hesitating, through a sense of duty; "does it not, John?"

"It is so difficult to know what a woman really means by the word, 'shame,'" replies John, absently, being deep in the morning's paper. "You said it was a shame yesterday when the cat drank all the cream; and Molly said it was a shame when Wyndham ran away with Crofton's wife."

"Don't take any notice of him, Letty," says Molly, with a scornful shrug of her pretty shoulders, turning her back on her brother, and resuming the all-important subject of the expected visitor.

"Another railway accident, and twenty men killed," says Mr. Massereene, in a few minutes, looking up from his Times, and adopting the lugubrious tone one always assumes on such occasions, whether one cares or not.

"Wasn't it fortunate we put up those curtains clean last week?" murmurs Letitia, in a slow, self-congratulatory voice.

"More than fortunate," says Molly.

"Twenty men killed, Letty!" repeats Mr. Massereene, solemnly.

"I don't believe there is a spare bath in the house," exclaims Letitia, again sinking into the lowest depth of despair.

"You forget the old one in the nursery. It will do for the children very well, and he can have the new one," says Molly.

"Twenty men killed, Molly!" reiterates Mr. Massereene, a faint gleam of surprised disgust creeping into his eyes.

"So it will, dear. Molly, you are an immense comfort. What did you say, John? Twenty men killed? Dreadful! I wonder, Molly, if I might suggest to him that I would not like him to smoke in bed? I hear a great many young men have that habit; indeed, a brother of mine, years ago, at home, nearly set the house on fire one night with a cigar."

"Let me do all the lecturing," says Molly, gayly; "there is nothing I should like better."

"Talk of ministering angels, indeed!" mutters Mr. Massereene, rising, and making for the door, paper and all. "I don't believe they would care if England was swamped, so long as they had clean curtains for Luttrell's bed."

[ ]

CHAPTER II.

"A lovely lady, garmented in light

From her own beauty."

—Shelley.

The day that is to bring them Luttrell has dawned, deepened, burst into perfect beauty, and now holds out its arms to the restful evening. A glorious sunny evening as yet, full of its lingering youth, with scarce a hint of the noon's decay. The little yellow sunbeams, richer perhaps in tint than they were two hours agone, still play their games of hide-and-seek and bo-peep among the roses that climb and spread themselves in all their creamy, rosy, snowy loveliness over the long, low house where live the Massereenes, and breathe forth scented kisses to the wooing wind.

A straggling house is Brooklyn, larger, at the first glance, than it in reality is, and distinctly comfortable, yet with its comfort, a thing very far apart from luxury, and with none of the sleepiness of an over-rich prosperity about it. In spite of the late June sun, there is a general air of life, a tremulous merriment, everywhere: the voices of the children, a certain laugh that rings like far-off music, the cooing of the pigeons beneath the eaves, the cluck-cluck of the silly fowls in the farm-yard,—all mingle to defy the creeping sense of laziness that the day generates.

"It is late," says Mr. Massereene to himself, examining his watch for the fifteenth time as he saunters in a purposeless fashion up and down before the hall door. There is a suppressed sense of expectancy both in his manner and in the surroundings. The gravel has been newly raked, and gleams white and untrodden. The borders of the lawn that join on to it have been freshly clipped. A post in the railings, that for three weeks previously has been tottering to its fall, has been securely propped, and now stands firm and uncompromising as its fellows.

"It is almost seven," says Letitia, showing her fresh, handsome face at the drawing-room window. "Do you think he will be here for dinner, John?"

"I am incapable of thought," says John. "I find that when a man who is in the habit of dining at six is left without his dinner until seven he grows morose. It is a humiliating discovery. Surely the stomach should be subservient to the mind; but it isn't. Letitia, like a good girl, do say you have ordered up the soup."

"But, my dear John, had we not better wait a little longer?"

"My dear Letitia, most certainly not, unless you wish to raise a storm impossible to quell. At present I feel myself in a mood that a very little more waiting will render ferocious. Besides,"—seeing his wife slightly uneasy,—"as he did not turn up about six, he cannot by any possibility be here until half-past eight."

"And I took such trouble with that dinner!" says Letitia, with a sigh.

"I am more glad to hear it than I can tell you," says her husband, briskly. "Take my word for it, Letty, your trouble won't go for nothing."

"Gourmand!" says Letitia, with the smile she reserves alone for him.

Eight,—half-past eight—nine.

"I don't believe he is coming at all," says Molly, pettishly, coming out from the curtains of the window, and advancing straight into the middle of the room.

Under the chandelier, that has been so effectively touched up for this recreant knight, she stands bathed in the soft light of the many candles that beam down with mild kindliness upon her. It seems as though they love to rest upon her,—to add yet one more charm, if it may be, to the sweet, graceful figure, the half-angry, wholly charming attitude, the tender, lovable, fresh young face.

Her eyes, large, dark, and blue,—true Irish eyes, that bespeak her father's race,—shine with a steady clearness. They do not sparkle, they are hardly brilliant; they look forth at one with an expression so soft, so earnest, yet withal so merry, as would make one stake their all on the sure fact that the heart within her must be golden.

Her nut-brown hair, drawn back from her low brow into a loose coil behind, is enriched here and there with little sunny tresses, while across her forehead a few wavy locks—veritable love-locks, in Molly's case—wander idly, not as of a set purpose, but rather as though they have there drifted of their own gay will.

Upon her cheeks no roses lie,—unless they be the very creamiest roses that ever eye beheld. She is absolutely without color until such occasions rise as when grief or gladness touch her and dye her lovely skin with their red glow.

But it is her mouth—at once her betrayer and her chief charm—that one loves. In among its many curves lies all her wickedness,—the beautiful mouth, so full of mockery, laughter, fun, a certain decision, and tenderness unspeakable.

She smiles, and all her face is as one perfect sunbeam. Surely never has she looked so lovely. The smile dies, her lips close, a pensive sweetness creeps around them, and one terms one's self a fatuous fool to have deemed her at her best a moment since; and so on through all the many changes that only serve to show how countless is her store of hidden charms.

She is slender, but not lean, round, yet certainly not full, and of a middle height. For herself, she is impulsive; a little too quick at times, fond of life and laughter, as all youth should be, while perhaps (that I should live to say it!) down deep within her, somewhere, there hides, but half suppressed and ever ready to assert itself, a wayward, turbulent vein that must be termed coquetry.

Now, at this instant the little petulant frown, born of "hope deferred," that puckers up her forehead has fallen into her eyes, notwithstanding the jealous guard of the long curling lashes, and, looking out defiantly from thence, gives her all the appearance of a beloved but angry child fretting at the delay of some coveted toy.

"I don't believe he is coming at all," she says, again, with increased emphasis, having received no answer to her first assertion, Letitia being absorbed in a devout prayer that her words may come true, while John is disgracefully drowsy. "Oh, fancy the time I have wasted over my appearance, and all for nothing! I won't be able to get up the enthusiasm a second time: I feel that. How I hate young men,—young men in the army especially! They are so selfish and so good-for-nothing, with no thought for any one on earth but Number One. Give me a respectable, middle-aged squire, with no aspirations beyond South-downs and Early York."

"Poor Molly Bawn!" says John, rousing himself to meet the exigencies of the moment. "'I deeply sympathize.' And just when you are looking so nice, too: isn't she, Letty? I vow and protest, that young man deserves nothing less than extinction."

"I wish I had the extinguishing of him," says Molly, viciously. Then, laughing a little, and clasping her hands loosely behind her back, she walks to a mirror, the better to admire the long white trailing robe, the faultless face, the red rose dying on her breast. "And just when I had taken such pains with my hair!" she says, making a faint grimace at her own vanity. "John, as there is no one else to admire me, do say (whether you think it or not) I am the prettiest person you ever saw."

"I wouldn't even hesitate over such a simple lie as that," says John; "only—Letty is in the room: consider her feelings."

"A quarter to nine. I really think he can't be coming now," breaks in Letitia, hopefully.

"Coming or not coming, I shan't remain in for him an instant longer this delicious night," says Molly, walking toward the open window, under which runs a balcony, and gazing out into the still, calm moonlight. "He is probably not aware of my existence; so that even if he does come he will not take my absence in bad part; and if he does, so much the better. Even in such a poor revenge there is a sweetness."

"Molly," apprehensively, "the dew is falling."

"I hope so," answers Molly, with a smile, stepping out into the cool, refreshing dark.

Down the wooden steps, along the gravel path, into the land of dreaming flowers she goes. Pale moonbeams light her way as, with her gown uplifted, she wanders from bed to bed, and with a dainty greediness drinks in the honeyed breathings round her. Here now she stoops to lift with gentle touch a drooping head, lest in its slumber some defiling earth come near it; and here she stands to mark a spider's net, brilliant with dews from heaven. A crafty thing to have so fair a home!—And here she sighs.

"Well, if he doesn't come, what matters it? A stranger cannot claim regret. And yet what fun it would have been! what fun! (Poor lily, what evil chance came by you to break your stem and lay your white head there?) Perhaps—who knows?—he might be the stupidest mortal that ever dared to live, and then—yet not so stupid as the walls, and trees, and shrubs, while he can own a tongue to answer back. Ah! wretched slug, would you devour my tender opening leaves? Ugh! I cannot touch the slimy thing. Where has my trowel gone? I wish my ears had never heard his name,—Luttrell; a pretty name, too; but we all know how little is in that. I feel absurdly disappointed; and why? Because it is decreed that a man I never have known I never shall know. I doubt my brain is softening. But why has my tent been pitched in such a lonely spot? And why did he say he'd come? And why did John tell me he was good to look at, and, oh! that best of all things—young?"

A sound,—a step,—the vague certainty of a presence near. And Molly, turning, finds herself but a few yards distant from the expected guest. The fates have been kind!

A tall young man, slight and clean-limbed, with a well-shaped head so closely shaven as to suggest a Newgate barber; a long fair moustache, a long nose, a rather large mouth, luminous azure eyes, and a complexion the sun has vainly tried to brown, reducing it merely to a deeper flesh-tint. On the whole, it is a very desirable face that Mr. Luttrell owns; and so Molly decides in her first swift glance of pleased surprise. Yes, the fates have been more than kind.

As for Luttrell himself, he is standing quite still, in the middle of the garden-path, staring at this living Flora. Inside not a word has been said about her, no mention of her name had fallen ever so lightly into the conversation. He had made his excuses, had received a hearty welcome; both he and Massereene had declared themselves convinced that not a day had gone over the head of either since last they parted. He had bidden Mrs. Massereene good-night, and had come out here to smoke a cigar in quietude, all without suspicion that the house might yet contain another lovelier inmate. Is this her favorite hour for rambling? Is she a spirit? Or a lunatic? Yes, that must be it.

Meanwhile through the moonlight—in it—comes Molly, very slowly, a perfect creature, in trailing, snowy robes. Luttrell, forgetting the inevitable cigar,—a great concession,—stands mutely regarding her as, with warm parted lips and a smile, half amused, half wondering, she gazes back at him.

"Even a plain woman may gain beauty from a moonbeam; what, then, must a lovely woman seem when clothed in its pure rays?"

"You are welcome,—very welcome," says Molly, at length, in her low, soft voice.

"Thank you," returns he, mechanically, still lost in conjecture.

"I am not a fairy, nor a spirit, nor yet a vision," murmurs Molly, now openly amused. "Have no fear. See," holding out to him a slim cool hand; "touch me, and be convinced, I am only Molly Massereene."

He takes the hand and holds it closely, still entranced. Already—even though three minutes have scarcely marked their acquaintance—he is dimly conscious that there might possibly be worse things in this world than a perpetual near-to "only Molly Massereene."

"So you did come," she goes on, withdrawing her fingers slowly but positively, and with a faint uplifting of her straight brows, "after all. I was so afraid you wouldn't, you were so long. John—we all thought you had thrown us over."

To have Beauty declare herself overjoyed at the mere fact of your presence is, under any circumstances, intoxicating. To have such an avowal made beneath the romantic light of a summer moon is maddening.

"You cared?" says Luttrell, in hopeful doubt.

"Cared!" with a low gay laugh. "I should think I did care. I quite longed for you to come. If you only knew as well as I do the terrible, never-ending dullness of this place, you would understand how one could long for the coming of any one."

Try as he will, he cannot convince himself that the termination of this sentence is as satisfactory as its commencement.

"When the evening wore on," with a little depressed shake of her head, "and still you made no sign, and I began to feel sure it was all too good to be true, and that you were about to disappoint me and plead some hateful excuse by the morning post, I almost hated you, and was never in such a rage in my life. But," again holding out her hand to him, with a charming smile "I forgive you now."

"Then forgive me one thing more,—my ignorance," says Luttrell, retaining the fingers this time with much increased firmness. "And tell me who you are."

"Don't you know, really? You never heard of me from John or—— What a fall to my pride, and when in my secret heart I had almost flattered myself that——"

"What?" eagerly.

"Oh, nothing—only—— By the bye, now you have confessed yourself ignorant of my existence, what did bring you down to this uninteresting village?" All this with the most perfect naïveté.

"A desire," says Luttrell, smiling in spite of himself, "to see again your—what shall I say?"—hesitating—"father?"

"Nonsense," says Molly, quickly, with a little frown. "How could you think John my father? When he looks so young, too. I hope you are not stupid: we shall never get on if you are. How could he be my father?"

"How could he be your brother?"

"Step-brother, then," says Molly, unwillingly. "I will acknowledge it for this once only. But never again, mind, as he is dearer to me than half a dozen real brothers. You like him very much, don't you?" examining him anxiously. "You must, to take the trouble to come all the way down here to see him."

"I do, indeed, more than I can say," replies the young man, with wise heartiness that is yet unfeigned. "He has stood to me too often in the old school-days to allow of my ever forgetting him. I would go farther than Morley to meet him, after a lengthened absence such as mine has been."

"India?" suggests Molly, blandly.

"Yes." Here they both pause, and Molly's eyes fall on her imprisoned hand. She is so evidently bent on being again ungenerous that Luttrell forces himself to break silence, with the mean object of distracting her thoughts.

"Is it at this hour you usually 'take your walks abroad?'" he asks, smoothly.

"Oh, no," laughing; "you must not think that. To-night there was an excuse for me. And if there is blame in the matter, you must take it. But for your slothfulness, your tardiness, your unpardonable laziness," spitefully, "my temper would not have driven me forth."

"But," reproachfully, "you do not ask the cause of my delay. How would you like to be first inveigled into taking a rickety vehicle in the last stage of dissipation and then deposited by that vehicle, without an instant's warning, upon your mother earth? For my part, I didn't like it at all."

"I'm so sorry," says Molly, sweetly. "Did all that really happen to you, and just while I was abusing you with all my might and main? I think I shall have to be very good to you to make up for it."

"I think so too," says Luttrell, gravely. "My ignominious breakdown was nothing in comparison with a harsh word thrown at me by you. I feel a deep sense of injury upon me."

"It all comes of our being in what the papers call 'poor circumstances,'" says Molly, lightly. "Now, when I marry and you come to see me, I shall send a carriage and a spirited pair of grays to meet you at the station. Think of that."

"I won't," says Luttrell; "because I don't believe I would care to see you at all when—you are married." Here, with a rashness unworthy of him, he presses, ever so gently, the slender fingers within his own. Instantly Miss Massereene, with a marked ignoring of the suggestion in his last speech, returns to her forgotten charge.

"I don't want to inconvenience you," she says, demurely, with downcast lids, "but when you have quite done with my hand I think I should like it again. You see it is awkward being without it, as it is the right one."

"I'm not proud," says Luttrell, modestly. "I will try to make myself content if you will give me the left one."

At this they both laugh merrily; and, believe me, when two people so laugh together, there is very little ice left to be broken.

"And are you really glad I have come?" says Luttrell, bending, the better to see into her pretty face. "It sounds so unlikely."

"When one is starving, even dry bread is acceptable," returns Molly, with a swift but cruel glance.

"I refuse to understand you. You surely do not mean——"

"I mean this, that you are not to lay too much stress on the fact of my having said——"

"Well, Luttrell, where are you, old fellow? I suppose you thought you were quite forgotten. Couldn't come a moment sooner,—what with Letitia's comments on your general appearance and my own comments on my tobacco's disappearance. However, here I am at last. Have you been lonely?"

"Not very," says Mr. Luttrell, sotto voce, his eyes fixed on Molly.

"It is John," whispers that young lady mysteriously. "Won't I catch it if he finds me out here so late without a shawl? I must run. Good-night,"—she moves away from him quickly, but before many steps have separated them turns again, and, with her fingers on her lips, breathes softly, kindly—"until to-morrow." After which she waves him a last faint adieu and disappears.

[ ]

CHAPTER III.

"In my lady's chamber."

When John Massereene was seven years old his mother died. When he was seventeen his father had the imprudence to run away with the favorite daughter of a rich man,—which crime was never forgiven. Had there been the slightest excuse for her conduct it might have been otherwise, but in the eyes of her world there was none. That an Amherst of Herst Royal should be guilty of such a plebeian trick as "falling passionately in love" was bad enough, but to have her bestow that love upon a man at least eighteen years her senior, an Irishman, a mere engineer, with no money to speak of, with nothing on earth to recommend him beyond a handsome face, a charming manner, and a heart too warm ever to grow old, was not to be tolerated for a moment. And Eleanor Amherst, from the hour of her elopement, was virtually shrouded and laid within her grave so far as her own family was concerned.

Not that they need have hurried over her requiem, as the poor soul was practically laid there in the fourth year of her happy married life, dying of the same fever that had carried off her husband two days before, and leaving her three-year-old daughter in the care of her step-son.

At twenty-one, therefore, John Massereene found himself alone in the world, with about three hundred pounds a year and a small, tearful, clinging, forlorn child. Having followed his father's profession, more from a desire to gratify that father than from direct inclination, he found, when too late, that he neither liked it nor did it like him. He had, as he believed, a talent for farming; so that when, on the death of a distant relation, he found himself, when all was told, the possessor of seven hundred pounds a year, he bought Brooklyn, a modest place in one of the English shires, married his first love, and carried her and Molly home to it.

Once or twice in the early part of her life he had made an appeal to old Mr. Amherst, Molly's grandfather, on her behalf,—more from a sense of duty owing to her than from any desire to rid himself of the child, who had, indeed, with her pretty, coaxing ways, made a very cozy nest for herself in the deepest recesses of his large heart. But all such appeals had been unavailing. So that Molly had grown from baby to child, from child to girl, without having so much as seen her nearest relations, although Herst Royal was situated in the very county next to hers.

Even now, in spite of her having attained her eighteenth year, this ostracism is a matter of the most perfect indifference to Molly. She has been bred in a very sound contempt for the hard old man who so cruelly neglected her mother,—the poor mother whose love she never missed, so faithfully has John fulfilled her dying wishes. There is no poverty about this love, in which she has grown and strengthened: it is rich, all-sufficing. Even Letitia's coming only added another ray to its brightness.

They are a harmonious family, the Massereenes; they blend; they seldom disagree. Letitia, with her handsome English face, her tall, posée figure, and ready smile, makes a delicious centre-piece; John a good background; Molly a bit of perfect sunlight; the children flecks of vivid coloring here and there. They are an easy, laughter-loving people, with a rare store of contentment. They are much affected by those in their immediate neighborhood. Their servants have a good time of it. They are never out of temper when dinner is a quarter of an hour late. They all very much admire Molly, and Molly very much agrees with them. They are fond of taking their tea in summer in the open air; they are not fond of over-early rising; they never bore you with a description of the first faint beams of dawn; they fail to see any beauty in the dew at five o'clock in the morning; they are very reasonable people.

Yet the morning after his arrival, Luttrell, jumping out of his bed at eight o'clock, finds, on looking out of his window that overhangs the garden, Flora already among her flowers. Drawing back hastily,—he is a modest young man,—he grows suddenly energetic and makes good speed with his toilet.

When he is half dressed—that is, when his hair is brushed; but as yet his shirt is guiltless of a waistcoat—he cannot refrain from looking forth again, to see if she may yet be there, and, looking, meets her eyes.

He is slightly abashed; she is not. Mr. Massereene in his shirt and trousers is a thing very frequently seen at his window during the summer mornings. Mr. Luttrell presents much the same appearance. It certainly does occur to Molly that of the two men the new-comer is decidedly the better looking of the two, whereat, without any treachery toward John, she greatly rejoices. It does not occur to her that a blush at this moment would be a blush in the right place. On the contrary, she nods gayly at him, and calls out:

"Hurry! You cannot think what a delicious morning it is." And then goes on with her snipping and paring with the heartiest unconcern. After which Luttrell's method of getting into the remainder of his clothes can only be described as a scramble.

"How did you sleep?" asks Molly, a few minutes later, when he has joined her, looking up from the rose-bush over which she is bending, that holds no flower so sweet as her own self. "Well, I hope?"

"Very well, thank you," with a smile, his eyes fixed immovably upon the fresh beauty of her face.

"You look suspicious," says she, with a little laugh. "Are you thinking my question odd? I know when people are put over-night in a haunted chamber they are always asked the next morning whether they 'slept well,' in the fond hope that they didn't. But you need not be nervous. Nothing so inspiriting——"

"Is that a joke?" demands he, interrupting her, gravely.

"Eh? Oh, no! how could you think me guilty of such a thing? I mean that nothing so hopeful as an undeniable ghost has ever yet appeared at Brooklyn."

"Are you sure? Perhaps, then, I am to be the happy discoverer, as this morning early, about dawn, there came an unearthly tapping at my window that woke me, much to my disgust. I got up, but when I had opened the shutters could see nothing. Was not that a visitation? I looked at my watch, and found it was past four o'clock. Then I crept into my bed again, crestfallen,—'sold' with regard to an adventure."

"That was my magpie," cries Molly, with a merry laugh: "he always comes pecking at that hour, naughty fellow. Oh, what a tame ending to your romance! Your beautiful ghost come to visit you from unknown regions, clad in white and rustling garments, has resolved itself into a lame bird, rather poverty-stricken in the matter of feathers."

"I take it rather hardly that your dependent should come to disturb me," says Luttrell, reproachfully. "What have I done to him, or how have I ingratiated myself, that he should forsake you for me? I did not think even a meagre bird could have shown such outre taste. What fancy has he for my window?"

"Your window?" says Molly, quickly; then as quickly recollecting, she stops short, blushing a warm and lovely crimson. "Oh, of course,—yes, it was odd," she says, and, breaking down under the weight of her unhappy blush, busies herself eagerly with her flowers.

"Have I taken your bedroom?" asks he, anxiously, watching with cruel persistency the soft roses that bloom again at his words. "Yes, I see I have. That is too bad; and any room would have been good enough for a soldier. Are you sure you don't hate me for all the inconvenience I have caused you?"

"I can't be sure," says Molly, "yet. Give me time. But this I do know, that John will quarrel with us if we remain out here any longer, as breakfast must be quite ready by this. Come."

"When you spoke of my chamber as being haunted, a little time ago," says Luttrell, walking beside her on the gravel path, his hands clasped behind his back, "you came very near the truth. After what you have just told me, how shall I keep from dreaming about you?"

"Don't keep from it," says she, sweetly; "go on dreaming about me as much as ever you like. I don't mind."

"But I might," says Luttrell, "when it was too late."

"True," murmurs Molly, innocently: "so you might. John says all dreams arise from indigestion."

[ ]

CHAPTER IV.

"As through the land at eve we went."

—Tennyson.

Seven long blissful summer days have surrendered themselves to the greedy past. It is almost July. To-day is Wednesday,—to-morrow June will be no more.

"Molly," says Mr. Massereene, with the laudable intention of rousing Molly's ire, "this is the day for which we have accepted Lady Barton's invitation to go to the Castle, to meet Lord and Lady Rossmere."

"'This is the cat that killed the rat, that did something or other in the house that Jack built,'" interrupts Molly, naughtily.

"And on this occasion you have not been invited," goes on John, serenely, "which shows she does not think you respectable,—not quite fit for polite society; so you must stay at home, like the bold little girl, and meditate on your misdemeanors."

"Lady Barton is a very intelligent person, who fully understands my abhorrence of old fogies," says Miss Massereene, with dignity.

"Sour grapes," says John. "But, now that you have given such an unfair turn to Lady Barton's motives, I feel it my duty to explain the exact truth to Luttrell. When last, my dear Tedcastle, Molly was invited to meet the Rossmeres, she behaved so badly and flirted so outrageously with his withered lordship, that he became perfectly imbecile toward the close of the entertainment, and his poor old wife was reduced almost to the verge of tears. I blushed for her; I did indeed."

"Oh, John! how can you say such things before Mr. Luttrell? If he is foolish enough to believe you, think what a dreadful opinion he will have of me!" With a lovely smile at Luttrell across the bowl of flowers that ornaments the breakfast-table. "And with such a man, too! A terrible old person who has forgotten his native language and can only mumble, and who has not got one tooth in his mouth or one hair on his head, and no flesh at all to speak of."

"What a fetching description!" says Luttrell. "You excite my curiosity. He is not 'on view,' is he?"

"Not yet," says Molly, with an airy laugh. "Probably when he dies they will embalm him, and forward him to the British Museum, as a remarkable species of his kind; and then we shall all get the full value of one shilling. I myself would walk to London to see that."

"So would I," says Luttrell, "if you would promise to tell me the day you are going."

"Letitia, I feel myself de trop, whatever you may," exclaims John, rising. "And see how time flies; it is almost half-past ten. Really, we grow lazier every day. I shudder to think at what hour I shall get my breakfast by the time I am an old man."

(Poor John!)

"Why, you are as old as the hills this moment," says Molly, drawing down his kind face, that bears such a strong resemblance to her own, to bestow upon it a soft sweet kiss. "You are not to grow any older,—mind that; you are to keep on looking just as you look now forever, or I will not forgive you. Now go away and make yourself charming for your Lady Barton."

"Oh, I don't spend three hours before my looking-glass," says John, "whenever I go anywhere." He is smoothing her beautiful hair with loving fingers as he speaks. "But I think I will utter one word of warning, Ted, before I leave you to her tender mercies for the day. Don't give in to her. If you do, she will lead you an awful life. At first she bullied me until I hardly dared to call my soul my own; but when I found Letitia I plucked up spirit (you know a worm will turn), and ventured to defy her, and since that existence has been bearable."

"Letitia, come to my defense," says Molly, in a tragic tone, stretching out her arms to her sister-in-law, who has been busy pacifying her youngest hope. As he has at last, however, declared himself content with five lumps of sugar and eight sweet biscuits, she finds time to look up and smile brightly at Molly.

"Letitia, my dear, don't perjure yourself," says John. "You know I speak the truth. A last word, Luttrell." He is standing behind his sister as he speaks, and taking her arms he puts her in a chair, and placing her elbows on the table, so that her pretty face sinks into her hands, goes on: "The moment you see her take this attitude, run! don't pause to think, or speculate; run! Because it always means mischief; you may know then that she has quite made up her mind. I speak from experience. Good-bye, children. I hope you will enjoy each other's society. I shall be busy until I leave, so you probably won't see me again."

As Letitia follows him from the room, Molly turns her eyes on Luttrell.

"Are you afraid of me?" asks she, with a glance half questioning, half coquettish.

"I am," replies he, slowly.

"Now you are all my own property," says Molly, gayly, three hours later, after they have bidden good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Massereene, and eaten their own luncheon tête-à-tête. "You cannot escape me. And what shall we do with ourselves this glorious afternoon? Walk?—talk?—or——"

"Talk," says Luttrell, lazily.

"No, walk," says Molly, emphatically.

"If you have made up your mind to it, of course there is little use in my suggesting anything."

"Very little. Not that you ever do suggest anything," maliciously. "Now stay there, and resign yourself to your fate, while I go and put on my hat."

Along the grass, over the lawn, down to the water's edge, over the water, and into the green fields beyond, the young man follows his guide. Above, the blazing sun is shining with all its might upon the goodly earth; beneath, the grass is browning, withering beneath its rays; and in the man's heart has bloomed that tenderest, cruelest, sweetest of all delights, first love.

He has almost ceased to deny this fact to himself. Already he knows, by the miserable doubts that pursue him, how foolishly he lies to himself when he thinks otherwise. The sweet carelessness, the all-satisfying joy in the present that once was his, has now in his hour of need proved false, and, flying, leaves but a dull unrest in its place. He has fallen madly, gladly, idiotically in love with beautiful Molly Massereene.

Every curve of her pliant body is to him an untold poem; every touch of her hands is a new delight; every tone of her voice is as a song rising from out of the gloom of the lonely night.

"Here you are to stand and admire our potatoes," says Molly, standing still, and indicating with a little sweep of her hand the field in question. "Did you ever see so fine a crop? And did you notice how dry and floury they were at dinner yesterday?"

"I did," says Luttrell, lying very commendably.

"Good boy. We take very great pride out of our potatoes (an Irish dish, you will remember), more especially as every year we find ours are superior to Lord Barton's. There is a certain solace in that, considering how far short we fall in other matters when compared with him. Here is the oat-field. Am I to understand you feel admiration?"

"Of the most intense," gravely.

"Good again. We rather feared"—speaking in the affected, stilted style of a farming report she has adopted throughout—"last month was so deplorably wet, that the oats would be a failure; but we lived in hope, and you may mark the result here again: we are second to none. The wheat-field——" With another slight comprehensive gesture. "By the bye," pausing to examine his face, "am I fulfilling my duties as a hostess? Am I entertaining you?"

"Very much indeed. The more particularly that I was never so entertained before."

"I am fortunate. Well, that is the wheat. I don't know that I can expect you to go into ecstasies over it, as I confess to me it appears more or less weak about the head. Could one say that wheat was imbecile?"

"In these days," politely, "one may say anything one likes."

"Yes? You see that rain did some damage; but after all it might have been worse."

"You will excuse my asking the question," says Luttrell, gravely, "but did you ever write for the Farmer's Gazette?"

"Never, as yet. But," with an irrepressible smile, "your words suggest to me brilliant possibilities. Perhaps were I to sit down and tell every one in trisyllables what they already know only too well about the crops, and the weather, and the Colorado beetle, and so forth, I might perchance wake up some morning to find myself famous."

"I haven't the faintest doubt of it," says Tedcastle, with such flattering warmth that they both break into a merry laugh. Not that there is anything at all in the joke worthy of such a joyous outburst, but because they are both so young and both so happy.

"Do you think I have done enough duty for one day?" asks Molly. "Have I been prosy enough to allow of my leaving off now? Because I don't think I have got anything more to say about the coming harvest, and I wouldn't care to say it if I had."

"Do you expect me to say that I found you 'prosy'?"

"If you will be so very kind. And you are quite sure no one could accuse me of taking advantage of John's and Letty's absence to be frivolous in my conversation?"

"Utterly positive."

"And you will tell John what a sedate and gentle companion I was?"

"I will indeed, and more,—much more."

"On the contrary, not a word more: if you do you will spoil all. And now," says Molly, with a little soft, lingering smile, "as a reward for your promises, come with me to the top of yonder hill, and I will show you a lovely view."

"Is it not delicious here?" suggests Mr. Luttrell, who can scarcely be called energetic, and who finds it a difficult matter to grow enthusiastic over landscapes when oppressed by a broiling sun.

"What! tired already?" says Molly, with fine disregard of subterfuge.

"No, oh, no," weakly.

"But you are," reproachfully. "You are quite done up. Why, what would you do if you were ordered on a long day's march?"

"I dare say I should survive it," says Tedcastle, shortly, who is rather offended at her putting it in this light.

"Well, perhaps you might; but you certainly would have nothing to boast of. Now, look at me: I am as fresh as when we started." And in truth, as she stands before him, in her sky-blue gown, he sees she is as cool and bright and unruffled as when they left the house three-quarters of an hour ago. "Well," with a resigned sigh that speaks of disappointment, "stay here until I run up,—I love the place,—and I will join you afterward."

"Not I!" indignantly. "I'm good yet for so much exertion, and I don't believe I could exist without you for so long. 'Call, and I follow—I follow,' even though 'I die,'" he adds to himself, in a tone of melancholy.

Up the short but steep hill they toil in silence. Halfway Miss Massereene pauses, either to recover breath or to give encouragement.

"On the top there is always a breeze," she says, in the voice one adopts when determined to impress upon the listener what one's own heart knows to be doubtful.

"Is there?" says Luttrell, gloomily, and with much disbelief.

At length they gain the wished-for top. They stand together, Molly with her usually pale cheeks a little flushed by the exercise, but otherwise calm and collected; Luttrell decidedly the worse for wear. And, yes, there actually is a breeze,—a sighing, rustling, unmistakable breeze, that rushes through their hair and through their fingers, and is as a draught from Olympus.

"There, didn't I tell you?" cries Molly, with all the suspicious haste and joy that betrays how weak has been her former hope. "Now, do say you are glad I brought you up."

"What need? My only happiness is being with you," says the young man, softly.

"See how beautiful the land is,—as far as one can discern all green and gold," says she, unheeding his subdued tenderness. "Honestly, I do feel a deep interest in farming; and of all the grain that grows I dearly love the barley. First comes the nice plowed brown earth; then the ragged bare suspicion of green; then the strengthening and perfecting of that green until the whole earth is hidden away; then the soft, juicy look of the young blades nodding and waving at each other in the wind, that seems almost tender of them, and at last the fleecy, downy ears all whispering together."

"When you speak in that tone you make me wish myself a barleycorn," says Tedcastle, smiling. "Sit down here beside me, will you, and tell me why your brother calls you 'Molly Bawn'?"

"I hardly know," sinking down near him on the short, cool grass: "it was a name he gave me when I was a little one. John has ever been my father, my mother, my all," says the girl, a soft and lovely dew of earnest affection coming into her eyes. "Were I to love him all my life with twice the love I now bear him, I would scarcely be grateful enough."

"Happy John! Molly! What a pretty name it is."

"But not mine really. No. I was christened Eleanor, after my poor mother, whose history you know. 'Bawn' means fair. 'Fair Molly,'" says she, with a smile, turning to him her face, that resembles nothing so much as a newly-opened flower. "I had hair quite golden when a child. See," tilting her hat so that it falls backward from her head and lies on the greensward behind. "It is hardly dark yet."

"It is the most beautiful hair in the world," says he, touching with gentle, reverential fingers the silken coils that glint and shimmer in the sunlight. "And it is a name that suits you,—and you only."

"Did I never sing you the old Irish song I claim as my own?"

"You never sang for me at all."

"What! you have been here a whole week, and I have never sung for you?" With widely-opened eyes of pure surprise. "What could I have been thinking about? Do you know, I sing very nicely." This without the faintest atom of conceit. "Listen, then, and I will sing to you now."

With her hands clasped around her knees, her head bare, her tresses a little loosened by the wind, and her large eyes fixed upon the distant hills, she thus sweetly sings:

"Oh, Molly Bawn! why leave me pining,

All lonely waiting here for you,

While the stars above are brightly shining,

Because they've nothing else to do?

Oh, Molly Bawn! Molly Bawn!

"The flowers late were open keeping,

To try a rival blush with you,

But their mother, Nature, set them sleeping

With their rosy faces washed in dew.

Oh, Molly Bawn! Molly Bawn!

"The village watch-dog here is snarling;

He takes me for a thief, you see;

For he knows I'd steal you, Molly darling,

And then transported I should be!

Oh, Molly Bawn! Molly Bawn!"

"An odd old song, isn't it?" she says, presently, glancing at him curiously, when she has finished singing, and waited, and yet heard no smallest sound of praise. "You do not speak. Of what are you thinking?"

"Of the injustice of it," says he, in a low, thoughtful tone. "Had you not a bounteous store already when this last great charm was added on? Some poor wretches have nothing, some but a meagre share, while you have wrested from Fortune all her best gifts,—beauty——"

"No, no! stop!" cries Molly, gayly; "before you enumerate the good things that belong to me, remember that I still lack the chiefest: I have no money. I am without doubt the most poverty-stricken of your acquaintances. Can any confession be more humiliating? Good sir, my face is indeed my fortune. Or is it my voice?" pausing suddenly, as though a cold breath from the dim hereafter had blown across her cheek. "I hardly know."

"A rich fortune either way."

"And here I am recklessly imperiling one," hastily putting on her hat once more, "by exposing my precious skin to that savage sun. Come,—it is almost cool now,—let us have a good race down the hill." She slips her slender fingers within his,—a lovable trick of hers, innocent of coquetry,—and, Luttrell conquering with a sigh a wild desire to clasp and kiss the owner of those little clinging fingers on the spot, together they run down the slope into the longer grass below, and so, slowly and more decorously, journey homeward.

On their return they find the house still barren of inmates; no sign of the master or mistress anywhere. Even the servants are invisible. "It might almost be the enchanted palace," says Molly.

Two of the children, seeing her on the lawn, break from their nurse, who is sleeping the sleep of the just, with her broad back against an elm, and running to Molly, fling their arms around her. She rewards them with a kiss apiece, one of which Luttrell surreptitiously purloins from the prettiest.

"Oh, you have come back, Molly. And where have you been?"

"Over the hills and far away."

"Very far away? But you brought her back again," nodding a golden head gravely at Luttrell; "and nurse said you wouldn't. She said all soldiers were wicked, and that some day you would steal our Molly. But you won't," coaxingly: "will you, now?"

Luttrell and Molly laugh and redden a little.

"I doubt if I would be able," he says, without raising his eyes from the child's face.

"I don't think you are a soldier at all," declares the darker maiden, coming more boldly to the front, as though fortified by this assertion. "You have no sword; and there never was a soldier without a sword, was there?"

"I begin to feel distinctly ashamed of myself," says Luttrell. "I have a sword, Daisy, somewhere. But not here. The next time I come I will bring it with me for your special delectation."

"Did you ever cut off any one's head?" asks the timid, fair-haired Renee, in the background, moving a few steps nearer to him, with rising hope in her voice.

"Miss Massereene, if you allow this searching examination to go on, I shall sink into the ground," says Luttrell. "I feel as if the eyes of Europe were upon me. Why cannot I boast that I have sent a thousand blacks to glory? No, Renee, with shame I confess it, I am innocent of bloodshed."

"I am so glad!" says the darker Daisy, while the gentler looking child turns from him with open disappointment.

"Do you think you can manage to amuse yourself for a little while?" says Molly. "Because I must leave you; I promised Letty to see after some of her housekeeping for her: I won't be too long," with a view to saving him from despair.

"I will see what a cigar can do for me," replies he, mournfully. "But remember how heavily time drags—sometimes."

Kissing her hand to him gayly, she trips away over the grass, leaving him to the tender mercies of the children. They, with all the frightful energy of youth, devote themselves to his service, and, seizing on him, carry him off to their especial sanctum, where they detain him in durance vile until the welcome though stentorian lungs of the nurse make themselves heard.

"There, you may go now," says Daisy, giving him a last ungrateful push; and as in a body they abscond, he finds himself depressed, but free. Not only free, but alone. This brings him back to thoughts of Molly. How long she is! Women never do know what time means. He will walk round to the yard and amuse himself with the dogs until she has finished her tiresome business.

Now, the kitchen window looks out upon the path he means to tread;—not only the kitchen window, but Molly. And as Luttrell comes by, with his head bent and a general air of moodiness about him, she is so far flattered by his evident dullness that she cannot refrain from tapping at the glass to call his attention.

"Have you been enjoying yourself?" asks she, innocently. "You look as if you had."

He starts as her voice so unexpectedly meets his ear, and turns upon her a face from which all ennui has fled.

"Do I?" he says. "Then my looks lie. Enjoying myself, with a pack of small demons! For what do you take me? No, I have been wretched. What on earth are you doing down there? You have been hours about it already. Surely, whatever it is, it must be done now. If you don't come out shortly you will have murder on your soul, as I feel suicidal."

"I can't come yet."

"Then would you let me—might I——"

"Oh, come here if you like," says Molly. "I don't mind, if you don't."

Without waiting further invitation, Luttrell goes rapidly round, descends the kitchen steps, and presently finds himself in Molly's presence.

It is a pretty old-fashioned, low-ceilinged kitchen, full of quaint corners and impossible cupboards so high up in the wall as at first sight to be pronounced useless.

A magnificent fire burns redly, yet barely causes discomfort. (Why is it that a fire in the kitchen fails to afflict one as it would, if lit in summer, in the drawing-room or parlor?) Long, low benches, white as snow, run by the walls. The dresser—is there anything prettier than a well-kept dresser?—shines out conceitedly from its own place, full of its choicest bravery. In the middle of the gleaming tiles stands the table, and beside it stands Molly.

Such a lovely Molly!—a very goddess of a Molly!

Her white arms, bare to the elbow, are covered with flour; a little patch of it has found a resting-place on the right side of her hair, where undoubtedly one hand must have gone to punish some amorous lock that would wander near her lips. Her eyes are full of light; her very lips are smiling. Jane, the cook, at a respectful distance, is half ashamed at the situation of her young lady; the young lady is not at all ashamed.

"Do you like me?" cries she, holding her floury arms aloft. "Are you lost in admiration? Ah! you have yet to learn how universal are my gifts. I can cook!"

"Can you?" says Luttrell, with a grimace. "What are you making now? I am anxious to know."

"Positively," bending a little forward, the better to see him; "you look it. Why?"

"That I may avoid it by and by." Here, with a last faint glimmer of prudence, he retires to the other end of the table.

"Have you come here to insult me in my own domain?" cries Molly wrathfully. "Rash youth, you rush upon your fate; or, to speak more truthfully, your fate intends to rush on you. Now take the consequences."

With both her hands extended she advances on him, fell determination in her eye. Alas for his coat when those ten snowy fingers shall have marked it for their own!

"Mercy!" cries Luttrell, falling on his knees at her feet. "Anything but that. I apologize, I retract; I will do penance; I will even eat it, every bit; I will——"

"Will you go away?"

"No," heroically, rising to his full height, "I will not. I would rather be white from head to heel than leave this adorable kitchen."

There is a slight pause. Mercy and vengeance are in the balance, and Molly holds the scales. After a brief struggle mercy triumphs.

"I forgive you," says Molly, withdrawing; "but as punishment you really must help me, as I am rather late this evening. Here, stone these," pushing toward him a plateful of raisins."

"Law, miss, I'll do 'em," says Jane, who feels matters are going too far. To have a strange gentleman, one of the "high-up" gentry, a "reel millingtary swell," stoning raisins in her kitchen is more than she can reconcile herself to in silence; she therefore opens the floodgates of speech. "He'll soil hisself," she says, in a deep, reproachful whisper, fixing an imploring eye on Molly.

"I hope so," murmurs that delinquent, cheerfully. "He heartily deserves it. You may go and occupy yourself elsewhere, Jane; Mr. Luttrell and I will make this pudding. Now go on, Mr. Luttrell; don't be shirking your duty. It is either do or die."

"I think it is odds on the dying," says he.

Silence for at least three minutes,—in this case a long, long time.

"I can't find anything in them," ventures he, at last, in a slightly dejected tone; "and they're so horrid sticky."

"Nothing in them? Nonsense! you don't know how to go about it. Look. I'll show you. Open them with your first finger and thumb—so; and now do you see them?" triumphantly producing a round brown article on the tip of her finger.

"Where?" asks Luttrell, bending forward.

"There," says Molly, bending too. Their heads are very close together. The discreet Jane has retired into her pantry. "It is the real thing. Can't you see it?"

"Scarcely. It is very small, isn't it?"

"Well, it is small," Miss Massereene confesses, with reluctance; "it certainly is the smallest I ever saw. Still——"

By this time they are looking, not at the seed of the raisin, but into each other's eyes, and again there is an eloquent pause.

"May I examine it a little closer?" Luttrell asks, as though athirst for information, possessing himself quietly of the hand, raisin-stone, flour, and all, and bringing it suspiciously near to his lips. "Does it—would it—I mean does flour come off things easily?"

"I don't know," returns Molly, with an innocent gravity that puts him to shame. "Off some things it washes readily enough; but—mind you, I can't say for certain, as I have had no experience; but I don't think——"

"Yes?" seeing her hesitate.

"Well, I don't think," emphasizing each word with a most solemn nod, "it would come off your moustache in a hurry."

"I'll risk it, anyhow," says Luttrell, stooping suddenly to impress a fervent kiss upon the little powdered fingers he is holding.

"Oh! how wrong, how extremely wrong of you!" exclaims Miss Massereene, as successfully shocked as though the thought that he might be tempted to such a deed has never occurred to her. Yet, true to her nature, she makes no faintest pretense at withdrawing from him her hand until a full minute has elapsed. Then, unable longer to restrain herself, she bursts into a merry laugh,—a laugh all sweetest, clearest music.

"If you could only see how funny you look!" cries she. "You are fair with a vengeance now. Ah! do go and see for yourself." Giving him a gentle push toward an ancient glass that hangs disconsolately near the clock, and thereby leaving another betraying mark upon the shoulder of his coat.

Luttrell, having duly admired himself and given it as his opinion that though flour on the arms may be effective, flour on the face is not, has barely time to wipe his moustache free of it when Mrs. Massereene enters.

"You here," exclaims she, staring at Tedcastle, "of all places in the world! I own I am amazed. Oh, if your brother officers could only see you now, and your coat all over flour! I need hardly inquire if this is Molly's doing. Poor boy!" with a laugh. "It is a shame. Molly, you are never happy unless you are tormenting some one."

"But I always make it up to them afterward: don't I, now, Letty?" murmurs Molly, sweetly, speaking to Letitia, but directing a side-glance at Luttrell from under her long, dark lashes: this side-glance is almost a promise.

"Well, so you have come at last, Letty. And how did you enjoy your 'nice, long, happy day in the country,' as the children say?"

"Very much, indeed,—far more than I expected. The Mitchells were there, which added a little to our liveliness."

"And my poor old mummy, was he there? And is he still holding together?"

"Lord Rossmere? He is indeed, and was asking most tenderly for you. I never saw him look so well."

"Oh! it grows absurd," says Molly, in disgust. "How much longer does he intend keeping up the farce? He must fall to pieces soon."

"He hasn't a notion of it," says Letitia, warming to her description; "he has taken a new lease of his life. He looked only too well,—positively ten years younger. I think myself he was 'done up.' I could see his coat was padded; and he has adorned his head with a very sleek brown wig."

"Jane," says Molly, weakly, "be so good as to stand close behind me. I feel as if I were going to faint directly."

"Law, miss!" says Jane, giving way to her usual expletive. She is a clean and worthy soul where pots and pans are concerned, but apart from them can scarcely be termed eloquent.

"You are busy, Jane," says Mr. Luttrell, obligingly, "and I am not. (I see you are winding up that long-suffering pudding.) Let me take a little trouble off your hands. I will stand close behind Miss Massereene."

"He had quite a color too," goes on Letitia, mysteriously, "a very extraordinary color. Not that of an old man, nor yet of a young one, and I am utterly certain it was paint. It was a vivid, uncompromising red; so red that I think the poor old thing's valet must have overdone his work, for fun. Wasn't it cruel?"

"Are you ready, Jane?" murmurs Molly, with increasing weakness.

"Quite ready, miss," returns Luttrell, with hopeful promptness.

"I asked John on the way home what he thought," goes on Letitia, with an evident interest in her tale, "and he quite agrees with me that it was rouge, or, at all events, something artificial."

"One more word, Letitia,"—faintly,—"a last one. Has he had that sole remaining tooth in the front of his mouth made steady?"

"No," cries Mrs. Massereene, triumphantly, "he has not. Do you too remember that awful tooth? It is literally the only thing left undone, and I can't imagine why. It still waggles uncomfortably when he talks, and his upper lip has the same old trick of catching on it and refusing to come down again until compelled. Sir John was there, and took me in to luncheon; and as I sat just opposite Lord Rossmere I could see distinctly. I particularly noticed that."

"You have saved me," cries Molly, briskly. "Had your answer been other than it was, I would not have hesitated for a moment: I would have gone off into a death-like swoon. Thank you, Jane,"—with a backward nod at Luttrell, whom she has refused to recognize: "I need not detain you any longer."

"Mrs. Massereene, I shall never forgive you," says Luttrell.

"And is this the way you entertain your guests, Molly?" asks Letitia. "Have you spent your day in the kitchen?"

"The society of the 'upper ten' is not good for you, Letitia," says Molly, severely. "There is a faint flavor of would-be sarcasm about you, and it doesn't suit you in the least: your lips have not got the correct curve. No, my dear: although unnoticed by the nobility of our land, we, too, have had our 'nice, long, happy day in the country.' Haven't we, Mr. Luttrell?"

"Do you think he would dare say 'No' with your eyes upon him?" says Letitia, laughing. "By and by I shall hear the truth. Come with me"—to Tedcastle—"and have a glass of sherry before your dinner: I am sure you must want it, after all you have gone through."

[ ]

CHAPTER V.

"Gather the roses while ye may;

Old time is still a-flying;

And the same flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow will be dying."

—Herrick.

It is four o'clock, and a hush, a great stillness, born of oppressive heat, is over all the land. Again the sun is smiting with hot wrath the unoffending earth; the flowers nod drowsily or lie half dead of languor, their gay leaves touching the ground.

"The sky was blue as the summer sea,

The depths were cloudless overhead;

The air was calm as it could be;

There was no sight or sound of dread,"

quotes Luttrell, dreamily, as he strays idly along the garden path, through scented shrubs and all the many-hued children of light and dew. His reverie is lengthened yet not diffuse. One little word explains it all. It seems to him that word is everywhere: the birds sing it, the wind whistles it as it rushes faintly past, the innumerable voices of the summer cry ceaselessly for "Molly."

"Mr. Luttrell, Mr. Luttrell," cries some one, "look up." And he does look up.

Above him, on the balcony, stands Molly, "a thing of beauty," fairer than any flower that grows beneath. Her eyes like twin stars are gleaming, deepening; her happy lips are parted; her hair drawn loosely back, shines like threads of living gold. Every feature is awake and full of life; every movement of her sweet body, clad in its white gown, proclaims a very joyousness of living.

With hands held high above her head, filled with parti-colored roses, she stands laughing down upon him; while he stares back at her, with a heart filled too full of love for happiness. With a slight momentary closing of her lids she opens both her hands and flings the scented shower into his uplifted face.

"Take your punishment," she whispers, saucily, bending over him, "and learn your lesson. Don't look at me another time."

"It was by your own desire I did so," exclaims he, bewildered, shaking the crimson and yellow and white leaves from off his head and shoulders. "How am I to understand you?"

"How do I know, when I don't even understand myself? But when I called out to you 'Look up,' of course I meant 'look down.' Don't you remember the old game with the handkerchief?—when I say 'Let go,' 'hold fast;' and when I say 'Hold fast,' 'let go?' You must recollect it."

"I have a dim idea of something idiotic, like what you say."

"It is not idiotic, but it suits only some people; it suits me. There is a certain perverseness about it, a determination to do just what one is told not to do, that affects me most agreeably. Did I"—glancing at the rosy shower at his feet—"did I hurt you much?" With a smile.

There is a little plank projecting from the wood-work of the pillars that supports the balcony: resting his foot on this, and holding on by the railings above, Luttrell draws himself up until his face is almost on a level with hers,—almost, but not quite: she can still overshadow him.

"If that was all the injury I had received at your hands, how easy it would be to forgive!" says he, in a low tone.

"Poor hands," says Molly, gazing at her shapely fingers, "how have they sinned? Am I to understand, then, that I am not forgiven?"

"Yes."

"You are unkind to me."

"Oh, Molly!"

"Dreadfully unkind to me. Can you deny it? Now, tell me what this crime is that I have committed and you cannot pardon."

"I will not," says the young man, turning a little pale, while the smile dies out of his eyes and from round his lips. "I dread to put my injuries into words. Should they anger you, you might with one look seal my death-warrant."

"Am I so blood-thirsty? How badly you think of me!"

"Do I?" Reading with the wistful sadness of uncertainty her lovely face. "You know better than that. You know too—do you not?—what it is I would say,—if I dared. Oh, Molly, what have you done to me, what witchery have you used, that, after escaping for twenty-seven long years, I should now fall so hopelessly in——"

"Hush!" says Molly, quickly, and, letting her hand fall lightly on his forehead, brings it slowly, slowly, over his eyes and down his face, until at length it rests upon his lips rebukingly. "Not another word. You have known me but a few days,—but a little short three weeks,—and you would——"

"Yes, I would," eagerly, devouring with fond kisses the snow-flake that would stay his words. "Three weeks,—a year,—ten years,—what does it matter? I think the very first night I saw you here in this garden the mischief was done. My heart left me. You stole the very best of me; and will you give nothing in exchange?"

"I will not listen," says Molly, covering her ears with her hands, but not so closely that she must be deaf. "Do you hear? You are to be silent."

"Do you forbid me to speak?"

"Yes; I am in a hurry; I cannot listen,—now," says this born coquette, unable to release her slave so soon.

"Some other time,—when you know me better,—you will listen then: is that what you mean?" Still detaining her with passionate entreaty both in tone and manner. "Molly, give me one word of hope."

"I don't know what I mean," she says, effecting her escape, and moving back to the security of the drawing-room window, which stands open. "I never do know. And I have not got the least bit of memory in the world. Do you know I came out here to tell you tea was to be brought out for us under the trees on the lawn; and when I saw you I forgot everything. Is that a hopeful sign?" With a playful smile.

"I will try to think so; and—don't go yet, Molly." Seeing her about to enter the drawing-room. "Surely, if tea is to be on the lawn, it is there we ought to go."

"I am half afraid of you. If I consent to bestow upon you a little more of my society, will you promise not to talk in—in—that way again to me?"

"But——"

"I will have no 'buts.' Promise what I ask, or I will hide myself from you for the rest of the day."

"I swear, then," says he; and, so protected, Miss Massereene ventures down the balcony steps and accompanies him to the shaded end of the lawn.

By this time it is nearly five o'clock, and as yet oppressively warm. The evening is coming with a determination to rival in dull heat the early part of the day. The sheep in great white snowy patches lie panting in the distant corners of the adjoining fields; the cows, tired of whisking their foolish tails in an unsuccessful war with the insatiable flies, are all huddled together, and give way to mournful lows that reproach the tarrying milkmaid.

Above in the branches a tiny bird essays to sing, but stops half stifled, and, forgetting the tuneful note, contents itself with a lazy "cluck-cluck" that presently degenerates still further into a dying "coo" that is hardly musical, because so full of sleep.

Molly has seated herself upon the soft young grass, beneath the shade of a mighty beech, against the friendly trunk of which she leans her back. Even this short walk from the house to the six stately beeches that are the pride and glory of Brooklyn has told upon her. Her usually merry eyes have subsided into a gentle languor; over them the white lids droop heavily. No little faintest tinge of color adorns her pale cheeks; upon her lap her hands lie idle, their very listlessness betokening the want of energy they feel.

At about two yards' distance from her reclines her guest, full length, his fingers interlaced behind his head, looking longer, slighter than usual, as with eyes upturned he gazes in silence upon the far-off, never-changing blue showing through the net-work of the leaves above him.

"Are you quite used up?" asks Molly, in the slow, indifferent tone that belongs to heat, as the crisp, gay voice belongs to cold. "I never heard you silent for so long before. Do you think you are likely to die? Because—don't do it here, please: it would give me such a shock."

"I am far more afraid I shall live," replies her companion. "Oh, how I loathe the summer!"

"You are not so far gone as I feared: you can still use bad language. Now, tell me what sweet thought has held you in thrall so long."

"If I must confess it, I have been thinking of how untold a luxury at this moment would be an iced bath."

"'An iced bath'!" With as much contempt as she can summon. "How prosaic! And I quite flattered myself you were thinking of me." She says this as calmly as though she had supposed him thinking of his dinner.

Tedcastle's lips part in a faint smile, a mere glimmer,—a laugh is beyond him,—and he turns his head just so far round as will permit his eyes to fall full upon her face.

"I fancied such thoughts on my part tabooed," he says. "And besides, would they be of any advantage to you?"

"No material advantage, but they would have been only fair. I was thinking of you."

"Were you? Really!" With such overpowering interest as induces him to raise himself on his elbow, the better to see her. "You were thinking—that——"

"Don't excite yourself. I was wondering whether, when you were a baby, your nose—in proportion, of course—was as lengthy and solemn as it is now."

"Pshaw!" mutters Mr. Luttrell, angrily, and goes back to his original position.

"If it was," pursues Molly, with a ruthless and amused laugh, "you must have been an awfully funny baby to look at." She appears to find infinite amusement in this idea for a full minute, after which follows a disgusted silence that might have lasted until dinner-hour but for the sound of approaching footsteps.

Looking up simultaneously, they perceive Letitia coming toward them, with Sarah behind, carrying a tray, on which are cups, and small round cakes, and plates of strawberries.

"I have brought you your tea at last," cries Letitia, looking like some great fair goddess, with her large figure and stately walk and benign expression, as she bears down upon them. She is still a long way off, yet her voice comes to them clear and distinct, without any suspicion of shouting. She is smiling benevolently, and has a delicious pink color in her cheeks.

"We thought you had forgotten us," says Molly, springing to her feet with a sudden return of animation. "But you have come in excellent time, as we were on the very brink of a quarrel that would have disgraced the Kilkenny cats. And what have you brought us? Tea, and strawberries, and dear little hot cakes! Oh, Letty, how I love you!"

"So do I," says Luttrell. "Mrs. Massereene, may I sit beside you?"

"For protection?" asks she, with a laugh.

In the meantime Molly has arranged the tray before herself, and is busily engaged placing all the worst strawberries and the smallest cake on one plate.

"Before you go any further," says Luttrell, "I won't have that plate. Nothing shall induce me. So you may spare your trouble."

"Then you may go without any, as I myself intend eating all the others."

"Mrs. Massereene, you are my only friend. I appeal to you; is it fair? Just look at all she is keeping for herself. If I die for it, I will get my rights," exclaims Tedcastle, goaded into activity, and springing from his recumbent position, makes straight for the tray. There is a short but decisive battle; and then, victory being decided in favor of Luttrell, he makes a successful raid upon the fruit, and retires covered with glory and a good deal of juice.

"Coward, thief! won't I pay you for this?" cries Molly, viciously.

"I wouldn't use school-boy slang if I were you," returns Luttrell, with provoking coolness, and an evident irritating appreciation of the fruit.

Fortunately for all parties, at this moment John appears upon the scene.

"It is warm," says he, sinking on the grass, under the weak impression that he is imparting information.

"I think there is thunder in the air," says Letitia, with a mischievous glance at the late combatants, at which they laugh in spite of themselves.

"Not at all, my dear; you are romancing," says ignorant John. "Well, Molly Bawn, where is my tea? Have you kept me any?"

"As if I would forget you! Is it not an extraordinary thing, Letty, that Sarah cannot be induced to bring us a tea-pot? Now, I want more, and must only wait her pleasure."

"Remonstrate with her," says John.

"I am tired of doing so. Only yesterday I had a very lengthy argument with her on the subject, to the effect that as it was I who was having the tea, and not she, surely I might be allowed to have it the way I wished. When I had exhausted my eloquence, and was nearly on the verge of tears, I discovered that she was still at the very point from which we started. 'But the tea is far more genteeler, Miss Molly, when brought up without the tea-pot. It spoils the look of the tray.' I said 'Yes, the want of it does,' with much indignation; but I might as well have kept my temper."

"Much better," says Luttrell, placidly.

"I do hate having my tea poured out for me," goes on Molly, not deigning to notice him. "I am convinced Sarah lived with a retired tallow-chandler, or something equally horrible, before she came to us. She has one idol to which she sacrifices morning, noon, and night, and I think she calls it 'style.'"

"And what is that?" interposes Luttrell, anxiously.

"I don't know, but I think it has something to do with not putting the tea-pot on the tray, for instance, and taking the pretty fresh covers off the drawing-room chairs when any one is coming, to convince them of the green damask beneath. And once when, during a passing fit of insanity, I dressed my hair into a pyramid, she told me I looked 'stylish.' It took me some time to recover that shock to my vanity."

"I like 'stylish' people myself," says John. "Lady Barton, I am positive, is just what Sarah means by that, and I admire her immensely,—within bounds, of course, my dear Letitia."

"Dreadful, vulgar woman!" says Molly, with a frown. "I'm sure I wouldn't name Letty in the same day with her."

"We all know you are notoriously jealous of her," says John. "Her meridian charms eclipse yours of the dawn."

"How poetical!" laughs Molly. "But the thing to see is Letitia producing the children when her ladyship comes to pay a visit. She always reminds me of the Mother of the Gracchi. Now, confess it, Letty, don't you think Lady Barton's diamonds and rubies and emeralds grow pale and lustreless beside your living jewels?"

"Indeed I do," returns Letitia, with the readiest, most unexpected simplicity.

"Letitia," cries Molly, touched, giving her a little hug, "I do think you are the dearest, sweetest, truest old goose in the world."

"Nonsense, my dear!" says Letitia, with a slow pleased blush that is at once so youthful and so lovely.

"Oh! why won't Sarah come?" says Molly, recurring suddenly to her woes. "I know, even if I went on my knees to Mr. Luttrell, he would not so far trouble himself as to go in and find her; but I think she might remember my weakness for tea."

"There she is!" exclaims John.

To their right rises a hedge, on which it has been customary for ages to dry the household linen, and moving toward it appears Sarah, armed with a basket piled high to the very top.

"Sarah," calls Molly, "Sarah—Sarah!"

Now, Sarah, though an undeniably good servant, and a cleanly one, striking the beholder as a creature born to unlimited caps and spotless aprons, is undoubtedly obtuse. She presents her back hair and heels—that would not have disgraced an elephant—to Miss Massereene's call, and goes on calmly with her occupation of shaking out and hanging up to dry the garments she has just brought.

"Shall I go and call her?" asks Luttrell, with some remains of grace and an air of intense fatigue.

"Not worth your while," says John, with all a man's delicious consideration for a man; "she must turn in a moment, and then she will see us."

For two whole minutes, therefore, they gaze in rapt silence upon the unconscious Sarah. Presently Mr. Massereene breaks the eloquent stillness.

"There is nothing," says he, mildly, "that so clearly declares the sociability—the bon camaraderie, so to speak—that ought to exist in every well-brought-up family as the sight of washing done at home. There is such a happy mingling and yet such a thorough disregard of sex about it. It is 'Hail, fellow! well met!' all through. If you will follow Sarah's movements for a minute longer you will better understand what I mean. There! now she is spreading out Molly's pale-green muslin, in which she looked so irresistible last week. And there goes Daisy's pinafore, and Bobby's pantaloons; and now she is pausing to remove a defunct grasshopper from Renee's bonnet! What a charming picture it all makes, so full of life! There go Molly's stock——"

"John," interrupts Molly, indignantly, who has been frowning heavily at him for some time without the smallest result.

"If you say another word," puts in Luttrell, burying his face in the grass, with a deep groan, "if you go one degree further, I shall faint."

"And now comes my shirt," goes on John, in the same even tone, totally unabashed.

"My dear John!" exclaims Letitia, much scandalized, speaking in a very superior tone, which she fondly but erroneously believes to be stern and commanding, "I beg you will pursue the subject no further. We have no desire whatever to learn any particulars about your shirts."

"And why not, my dear?" demands Mr. Massereene, his manner full of mild but firm expostulation. "What theme so worthy of prolonged discussion as a clean shirt? Think of the horrors that encompass all the 'great unwashed,' and then perhaps you will feel as I do. In my opinion it is a topic on which volumes might be written: if I had time I would write them myself. And if you will give yourself the trouble to think, my dear Letitia, you will doubtless be able to bring to mind the fact that once a very distinguished and reasonable person called Hood wrote a song about it. Besides which——"

"She is looking now!" cries Molly, triumphantly. "Sarah—Sa—rah!"

"The 'bells they go ringing for Sarah,'" quotes Mr. Luttrell, irrelevantly. But Sarah has heard, and is hastening toward them, and wrath is for the present averted from his unlucky head.

Smiling, panting, rubicund, comes Sarah, ready for anything.

"Some more tea, Sarah," says Molly, with a smile that would corrupt an archbishop. Molly is a person adored by servants. "That's my cup."

"And that's mine," says Tedcastle, turning his upside down on his saucer. "I am particular about getting my own cup, Sarah, and hope you will not mistake mine for Miss Massereene's. Fill it, and bring it back to me just like this."

"Yes, sir," says Sarah, in perfect good faith.

"And, Sarah—next time we would like the tea-pot," puts in Mr. Massereene, mildly.

[ ]

CHAPTER VI.

"Oh, we fell out,—I know not why,—

And kissed again with tears."

—Tennyson.

They are now drawing toward the close of July. To Luttrell it appears as though the moments are taking to themselves wings to fly away; to more prosaic mortals they drag. Ever since that first day in the garden when he betrayed his love to Molly, he had been silent on the subject, fearful lest he gain a more decided repulse.

Yet this enforced silence is to him a lingering torture; and as a school-boy with money in his pocket burns till he spend it, so he, with his heart brimful of love, is in torment until he can fling its rich treasures at his mistress's feet. Only a very agony of doubt restrains him.

Not that this doubt contains all pain; there is blended with it a deep ecstasy of joy, made to be felt, not spoken; and all the grace and poetry and sweetness of a first great passion,—that thing that in all the chilling after-years never wholly dies,—that earliest, purest dew that falls from the awakening heart.

"O love! young love!

Let saints and cynics cavil as they will,

One throb of yours is worth whole years of ill."

So thinks Luttrell; so think I.

To-day Molly has deserted him, and left him to follow his own devices. John has gone into the next town on some important errand connected with the farm: so perforce our warrior shoulders his gun and sallies forth savagely, bent on slaying aught that comes in his way. As two crows, a dejected rabbit, and an intelligent squirrel are all that present themselves to his notice, he wearies toward three o'clock, and thinks with affection of home. For so far has his air-castle mounted that, were Molly to inhabit a hovel, that hovel to him would be home.

Crossing a stile and a high wall, he finds himself in the middle of the grounds that adjoin the more modest Brooklyn. The shimmer of a small lake makes itself seen through the branches to his right, and as he gains its bank a boat shoots forth from behind the willows, and a gay voice sings:

"There was a little man,

And he had a little gun,

And his bullets they were made of lead, lead, lead;

He went to a brook,

And he saw a little——"

"Oh, Mr. Luttrell, please, please don't shoot me," cries Molly, breaking down in the song with an exaggerated show of feigned terror.

"Do you call yourself a 'duck'?" demands Luttrell, with much scorn. "Is there any limit to a woman's conceit? Duck, indeed! say rather——"

"Swan? Well, yes, I will, if you wish it: I don't mind," says Molly, amiably. "And now tell me, are you not surprised to see me here?"

"I am, indeed. Are you ubiquitous? I thought I left you safe at home."

"So you did. But I never counted on your staying so long away. I was tired of waiting for you. I thought you would never come. So in despair I came out here by myself."

"So you absolutely missed me?" says Luttrell, quietly, although his heart is beating rapidly. Too well he knows her words are from the lips alone.

"Oh, didn't I!" exclaims she, heartily. "You should have seen me standing at the gate peering up and down for you and bemoaning my fate, like that silly Mariana in the moated grange. Indeed, if I had been photographed then and there and named 'Forsaken,' I'm positive I would have sold well."

"I don't doubt it."

"Then I grew enraged, and determined to trouble my head no more about you; and then—— It was lucky I came here, wasn't it?"

"Very lucky,—for me. But you never told me you had a boat on the lake."

"Because I hadn't,—at least not for the last two months,—until yesterday. It got broken in the spring, and they have been ever since mending it. They are so slow down here. I kept the news of its return from you a secret all yesterday, meaning to bring you here and show it you as a surprise; and this is how my plan has ended."

"But are you allowed? I thought you did not know the owners of this place."

"Neither do we. He is a retired butcher, I fancy (he doesn't look anything like as respectable as a grocer), with a fine disregard for the Queen's English. We called there one day, Letitia and I (nothing would induce John to accompany us), but Mrs. Butcher was too much for Letitia,—too much for even me," cries Molly, with a laugh, "and I'm not particular: so we never called again. They don't bear malice, however, and rather affect our having our boat here than otherwise. Jump in and row me for a little while."

Over the water, under the hanging branches they glide to the sweet music of the wooing wind, and scarcely care to speak, so perfect is the motion and the stillness.

Luttrell, with his hat off and a cigar between his lips, is far happier than he himself is at all aware. Being of necessity opposite her, he is calmly feasting himself upon the sweet scenery of Molly's face, or else letting his eyes wander to where her slender fingers drag their way through the cool water, leaving small bubbles in their track.

"It is a pity the country is so stupid, is it not?" says Molly, breaking the silence at length, and speaking in a regretful tone. "Because otherwise there is no place like it."

"Some country places are not at all stupid. There are generally too many people about. I think Brooklyn's principal charm is its repose, its complete separation from the world."

"Well, for my own part," seriously, "I think I would excuse the repose and the separation from the world, by which, I suppose, you mean society. I have no admiration for cloisters and convents myself; I like amusement, excitement. If I could, I would live in London all the year round," concludes Molly, with growing animation.

"Oh, horror!" exclaims Luttrell, who, seven years before, thought exactly as she does now, and who occasionally thinks so still. "Who that ever lived for six months among all its grime and smoke and turmoil but would pine for this calmer life?"

"I lived there for more than six months," says Molly, "and I didn't pine for anything. I thought it charming. It is all very well for you"—dejectedly—"who are tired of gayety, to go into raptures over calmness and tranquillity, and that; but if you lived in Brooklyn from summer until winter and from winter back again to summer, and if you could count your balls on one hand,"—holding up five wet open fingers,—"you would think just as I do, and long for change."

"I never knew you had been to London."

"Yes: when I was sixteen I spent a whole year there, with a cousin of my father's, who went to Canada with her husband's regiment afterward. But I didn't go out much, she thought me too young, though I was quite as tall as I am now. She heard me sing once, and insisted on carrying me up with her to get me lessons from Marigny. He took great pains with me: that is why I sing so well," says Molly, modestly.

"I confess I often wondered where your exquisite voice received its cultivation, its finish. Now I know. You were fortunate in securing Marigny. I have known him refuse dozens through want of time; or so he said. More probably he would not trouble himself to teach where there was no certainty of success. Well, and so you dislike the country?"

"No, no. Not so much that. What I dislike is having no one to speak to. When John is away and Letty on the tread-mill—that is, in the nursery—I am rather thrown on my own resources; and they are not much. Your coming was the greatest blessing that ever befell me. When I actually beheld you in your own proper person on the garden path that night, I could have hugged you in the exuberance of my joy."

"Then why on earth didn't you?" says Luttrell, reproachfully, as though he had been done out of something.

"A lingering sense of maiden modesty and a faint idea that perhaps you might not like it alone restrained me. But for that I must have given way to my feelings. Just think, if I had," says Molly, breaking into a merry laugh, "what a horrible fright I would have given you!"

"Not a horrible one, at all events. Molly," bending to examine some imaginary thing in the side of the boat, "have you never—had a—lover?"

"A lover? Oh, yes, I have had any amount of them," says Molly, with an alacrity that makes his heart sink. "I don't believe I could count my adorers: it quite puzzles me to know where to begin. There were the curates,—our rector is not sweet-tempered, so we have a fresh one every year,—and they never fail me. Three months after they come, as regular as clock-work, they ask me to be their wife. Now, I appeal to you,"—clasping her hands and wrinkling up all her pretty forehead,—"do I look like a curate's wife?"

"You do not," replies Luttrell, emphatically, regarding with interest the debonnaire, spirituelle face before him: "no, you most certainly do not."

"Well, I thought not myself; yet each of those deluded young men saw something angelic about me, and would insist on asking me to share his lot. They kept themselves sternly blind to the fact that I detest with equal vigor broth and old women."

"Intolerable presumption!" says Luttrell, parenthetically.

"Was it? I don't think I looked at it in that light. They were all very estimable men, and Mr. Rochfort was positively handsome. You, you may well stare, but some curates, you know, are good-looking, and he was decidedly High Church. In fact, he wasn't half so bad as the generality of them," says Molly, relentingly. "Only—it may be wrong, but the truth is I hate curates. I think nothing of them. They are a mixture of tea and small jokes, and are ever at a stand-still. They are always in the act of budding,—they never bloom; and then they are so afraid of the bishop."

"I thank my stars I'm not a curate," says Luttrell, devoutly.

"However,"—regretfully,—"they were something: a proposal is always an excitement. But the present man is married; so that makes it impossible for this present year. There was positively nothing to which to look forward. So you may fancy with what rapture I hailed your coming."

"You are very good," says Luttrell, in an uncertain tone, not being quite sure whether he is intensely amused or outrageously angry, or both. "Had you—any other lovers?"

"Yes. There was the last doctor. He poisoned a poor man afterward by mistake, and had to go away."

"After what?"

"After I declined to assist him in the surgery," says Molly, demurely. "It was a dreadful thing,—the poisoning, I mean,—and caused a great deal of scandal. I don't believe it was anybody's fault, but I certainly did pity the man he killed. And—it might have been me, you know; think of that! He was very much attached to me; and so was the Lefroys' eldest son, and James Warder, and the organist, to say nothing of the baker's boy, who, I am convinced, would cut his throat to oblige me to-morrow morning, if I asked him."

"Well, don't ask him," says Luttrell, imploringly. "He might do it on the door-step, and then think of the horrid mess! Promise me you won't even hint at it until after I am gone."

"I promise," says Molly, laughing.

Onward glides the boat; the oars rise and fall with a tuneful splash. Miss Massereene, throwing her hat with reckless extravagance into the bottom of the punt, bares her white arm to the elbow and essays to catch the grasses as she sweeps by them.

"Look at those lilies," she says, eagerly; "how exquisite, in their broad green frames! Water-sprites! how they elude one!" as she makes a vigorous but unsuccessful grab at some on her right hand.

"Very beautiful," says Luttrell, dreamily, with his eyes on Molly, not on the lilies.

"I want some," says Molly, revengefully; "I always do want what don't want me, and vice versa. Oh! look at those beauties near you. Catch them."

"I don't think I can; they are too far off."

"Not if you stoop very much for them. I think if you were to bend over a good deal you might do it."

"I might; I might do something else, too," says Luttrell, calmly, seeing it would be as easy for him to grasp the lilies in question as last night's moon: "I might fall in."

"Oh, never mind that," responds Molly, with charming though premeditated unconcern, a little wicked desire to tease getting the better of her amiability.

Luttrell, hardly sure whether she jests or is in sober earnest, opens his large eyes to their fullest, the better to judge, but, seeing no signs of merriment in his companion, gives way to his feelings a little.

"Well, you are cool," he says, slowly.

"I am not, indeed," replies innocent Molly. "How I wish I were 'cool,' on such a day as this! Are you?"

"No," shortly. "Perhaps that is the reason you recommended me a plunge; or is it for your amusement?"

"You are afraid," asserts Molly, with a little mischievous, scornful laugh, not to be endured for a moment.

"Afraid!" angrily. "Nonsense! I don't care about wetting my clothes, certainly, and I don't want to put out my cigar; but"—throwing away the choice Havana in question—"you shall have your lilies, of course, if you have set your heart on them."

Here, standing up, he strips off his coat with an air that means business.

"I don't want them now," says Molly, in a degree frightened, "at least not those. See, there are others close behind you. But I will pluck them myself, thank you: I hate giving trouble. No, don't put your hands near them. I won't have them if you do."

"Why?"

"Because you are cross, and I detest cross people."

"Because I didn't throw myself into the water head foremost to please you?" with impatient wrath. "They used to call that chivalry long ago. I call it folly. You should be reasonable."

"Oh, don't lose your temper about it," says Molly.

Now, to have a person implore you at any time "not to lose your temper" is simply abominable; but to be so implored when you have lost it is about the most aggravating thing that can occur to any one. So Luttrell finds it.

"I never lose my temper about trifles," he says, loftily.

"Well, I don't know what you call it, but when one puts on a frown, and drags down the corners of one's mouth, and looks as if one was going to devour some one, and makes one's self generally disagreeable, I know what I call it," says Molly, viciously.

"Would you like to return home?" asks Mr. Luttrell, with prompt solicitude. "You are tired, I think."

"'Tired'? Not in the least, thank you. I should like to stay out here for the next two hours, if——"

"Yes?"

"If you think you could find amusement for yourself—elsewhere!"

"I'll try," says Tedcastle, quietly taking up the oars and proceeding to row with much appearance of haste toward the landing-place.

By the time they reach it, Miss Massereene's bad temper—not being at any time a lengthened affair—has cooled considerably, though still a very handsome allowance remains. As he steps ashore, with the evident intention of not addressing her again, she feels it incumbent on her to speak just a word or so, if only to convince him that his ill-humor is the worst of the two.

"Are you going home?" asks she, with cold politeness.

"No,"—his eyebrows are raised, and he wears an expression half nonchalant, wholly bored,—"I am going to Grantham."

Now, Grantham is nine miles distant. He must be very angry if he has decided on going to Grantham. It will take him a long, long time to get there, and a long, long time to get back; and in the meantime what is to become of her?

"That is a long way, is it not?" she says, her manner a degree more frigid, lest he mistake the meaning of her words.

"The longer the better," ungraciously.

"And on so hot a day!"

"There are worse things than heat." Getting himself into his coat in such a violent fashion as would make his tailor shed bitter tears over the cruel straining of that garment.

"You will be glad to get away from——" hesitates Molly, who has also stepped ashore, speaking in a tone that would freeze a salamander.

"Very glad." With much unnecessary emphasis.

"Go then," cries she, with sudden passion, throwing down the oar she still holds with a decided bang, "and I hope you will never come back. There!"

And—will you believe it?—even after this there is no deluge.

So she goes to the right, and he goes to the left, and when too late repent their haste. But pride is ever at hand to tread down tenderness, and obstinacy is always at the heels of pride; and out of this "trivial cause" see what a "pretty quarrel" has been sprung.

"The long and weary day" at length has "passed away." The dinner has come to an unsuccessful end, leaving both Luttrell and his divinity still at daggers drawn. There are no signs of relenting about Molly, no symptoms of weakness about Tedcastle: the war is civil but energetic.

They glower at each other through each course, and are positively devoted in their attentions to John and Letitia. Indeed, they seem bent on bestowing all their conversational outbreaks on these two worthies, to their unmitigated astonishment. As a rule, Mr. and Mrs. Massereene have been accustomed to occupy the background; to-night they are brought to the front with a vehemence that takes away their breath, and is, to say the least of it, embarrassing.

Letitia,—dear soul,—who, though the most charming of women, could hardly be thought to endanger the Thames, understands nothing; John, on the contrary, comprehends fully, and takes a low but exquisite delight in compelling the antagonists to be attentive to each other.

For instance:

"Luttrell, my dear fellow, what is the matter with you this evening? How remiss you are! Why don't you break some walnuts for Molly? I would but I don't wish Letitia to feel slighted."

"No, thank you, John,"—with a touch of asperity from Molly,—"I don't care for walnuts."

"Oh, Molly Bawn! what a tarididdle! Only last night I quite shuddered at the amount of shells you left upon your plate. 'How can that wretched child play such pranks with her digestion?' thought I, and indeed felt thankful it had not occurred to you to swallow the shells also."

"Shall I break you some, Miss Massereene?" asks Luttrell, very coldly.

"No, thank you," ungraciously.

"Luttrell, did you see that apple-tree in the orchard? I never beheld such a show of fruit in my life. The branches will hardly bear the weight when it comes to perfection. It is very worthy of admiration. Molly will show it to you to-morrow: won't you, Molly?"

Luttrell, hastily: "I will go round there myself after breakfast and have a look at it."

John: "You will never find it by yourself. Molly will take you; eh, Molly?"

Molly, cruelly: "I fear I shall be busy all the morning; and in the afternoon I intend going with Letitia to spend the day with the Laytons."

Letitia, agreeably surprised: "Oh, will you, dear? That is very good of you. I thought this morning you said nothing would induce you to come with me. I shall be so glad to have you; they are so intensely dull and difficult."

Molly, still more cruelly: "Well, I have been thinking it over, and it seems, do you know, rather rude my not going. Besides, I hear their brother Maxwell (a few more strawberries, if you please, John) is home from India, and—he used to be so good-looking."

John, with much unction: "Oh, has he come at last! I am glad to hear it. (Luttrell, give Molly some strawberries.) You underrate him, I think: he was downright handsome. When Molly Bawn was in short petticoats he used to adore her. I suppose it would be presumptuous to pretend to measure the admiration he will undoubtedly feel for her now. I have a presentiment that fortune is going to favor you in the end, Molly. He must inherit a considerable property."

"Rich and handsome," says Luttrell, with exemplary composure and a growing conviction that he will soon hate with an undying hatred his whilom friend John Massereene. "He must be a favorite of the gods: let us hope he will not die young."

"He can't," says Letitia, comfortably: "he must be forty if he is a day."

"And a good, sensible age, too," remarks John; whereupon Molly, who is too much akin to him in spirit not to fully understand his manœuvering, laughs outright.

Then Letitia rises, and the two women move toward the door; and Molly, coming last, pauses a moment on the threshold, while Luttrell holds the door open for her. His heart beats high. Is she going to speak to him, to throw him even one poor word, to gladden him with a smile, however frozen?

Alas! no. Miss Massereene, with a little curve of her neck, glances back expressively to where an unkind nail has caught the tail of her long soft gown. That miserable nail—not he—has caused her delay. Stooping, he extricates the dress. She bows coldly, without raising her eyes to his. A moment later she is free; still another moment, and she is gone; and Luttrell, with a suppressed but naughty word upon his lips, returns to his despondency and John; while Molly, who, though she has never once looked at him, has read correctly his fond hope and final disappointment, allows a covert smile of pleased malevolence to cross her face as she walks into the drawing-room.

Mr. Massereene is holding a long and very one-sided argument on the subject of the barbarous Mussulman. As Luttrell evinces no faintest desire to disagree with him in his opinions, the subject wears itself out in due course of time; and John, winding up with an amiable wish that every Turk that ever has seen the light or is likely to see the light may be blown into fine dust, finishes his claret and rises, with a yawn.

"I must leave you for awhile," he says: "so get out your cigars, and don't wait for me. I'll join you later. I have had the writing of a letter on my conscience for a week, and I must write it now or never. I really do believe I have grasped my own meaning at last. Did you notice my unusual taciturnity between the fish and the joint?"

"I can't say I did. I imagined you talking the entire time."

"My dear fellow, of what were you thinking. I sincerely trust you are not going to be ill; but altogether your whole manner this evening—— Well, just at that moment a sudden inspiration seized me, and then and there my letter rose up before me, couched in such eloquent language as astonished even myself. If I don't write it down at once I am a lost man."

"But now you have composed it to your satisfaction, why not leave the writing of it until to-morrow?" expostulates Luttrell, trying to look hearty, as he expresses a hypocritical desire for his society.

"I always remark," says John, "that sleeping on those treacherous flights of fancy has the effect of taking the gilt off them. When I rise in the morning they are hardly up to the mark, and appear by no means so brilliant as they did over-night. Something within warns me if I don't do it now I won't do it at all. There is more claret on the sideboard,—or brandy, if you prefer it," says Mr. Massereene, tenderly.

"Thanks,—I want nothing more," replies Luttrell, whose spirits are at zero. As Massereene leaves him, he saunters toward the open window and gazes on the sleeping garden. Outside, the heavens are alive with stars that light the world in a cold, sweet way, although as yet the moon has not risen. All is

"Clear, and bright, and deep;

Soft as love, and calm as death;

Sweet as a summer night without a breath."

Lighting a cigar (by the bye, can any one tell me at what stage of suffering it is a man abandons this unfailing friend as being powerless to soothe?), he walks down the balcony steps, and, still grim and unhappy, makes up his mind to a solitary promenade.

Perhaps he himself is scarcely conscious of the direction he takes, but his footsteps guide him straight over the lawn and down to the very end of it, where a broad stream runs babbling in one corner. It is a veritable love-retreat, hedged in by larches and low-lying evergreens, so as to be completely concealed from view, and a favorite haunt of Molly's,—indeed, such a favorite that now as he enters it he finds himself face to face with her.

An impromptu tableau follows. For a full minute they regard each other unwillingly, too surprised for disdain, and then, with a laudable desire to show how unworthy of consideration either deems the other, they turn slowly away until a shoulder and half a face alone are visible.

Now, Luttrell has the best of it, because he is the happy possessor of the cigar: this gives him something to do, and he smokes on persistently, not to say viciously. Miss Massereene, being without occupation beyond what one's thumbs may afford, is conscious of being at a disadvantage, and wishes she had earlier in life cultivated a passion for tobacco.

Meanwhile, the noisy brook flows on merrily, chattering as it goes, and reflecting the twinkling stars, with their more sedate brethren, the planets. Deep down in the very heart of the water they lie, quivering, changing, gleaming, while the stream whispers their lullaby and dashes its cool soft sides against the banks. A solitary bird drops down to crave a drink, terrifying the other inhabitants of the rushes by the trembling of its wings; a frog creeps in with a dull splash; to all the stream makes kind response; while on its bosom

"Broad water-lilies lay tremulously,

And starry river-buds glimmered by;

And round them the soft stream did glide and dance,

With a motion of sweet sound and radiance."

A little way above, a miniature cataract adds its tiny roar to the many "breathings of the night;" at Molly's feet lie great bunches of blue forget-me-nots.

Stooping, she gathers a handful to fasten at her breast; a few sprays still remain in her hands idle; she has turned so that her full face is to her companion: he has never stirred.

He is still puffing away in a somewhat indignant fashion at the unoffending cigar, looking taller, more unbending in his evening clothes, helped by the dignity of his wrongs. Miss Massereene, having indulged in a long examination of his would-be stern profile, decides on the spot that if there is one thing on earth toward which she bears a rancorous hatred it is an ill-tempered man. What does he mean by standing there without speaking to her? She makes an undying vow that, were he so to stand forever, she would not open her lips to him; and exactly sixty seconds after making that terrible vow she says,—oh, so sweetly!—"Mr. Luttrell!"

He instantly pitches the obnoxious cigar into the water, where it dies away with an angry fizz, and turns to her.

She is standing a few yards distant from him, with her head a little bent and the bunch of forget-me-nots in one hand, moving them slowly, slowly across her lips. There is penitence, coquetry, mischief, a thousand graces in her attitude.

Now, feeling his eyes upon her, she moves the flowers about three inches from her mouth, and, regarding them lovingly, says, "Are not they pretty!" as though her whole soul is wrapt in contemplation of their beauty, and as though no other deeper thought has led her to address him.

"Very. They are like your eyes," replies he, gravely, and with some hesitation, as if the words came reluctantly.

This is a concession, and so she feels it. A compliment to a true woman comes never amiss; and the knowledge that it has been wrung from him against his will, being but a tribute to its truth, adds yet another charm. Without appearing conscious of the fact, she moves a few steps nearer to him, always with her eyes bent upon the flowers, the grass, anywhere but on him: because you will understand how impossible it is for one person to drink in the full beauty of another if checked by that other's watchfulness. Molly, at all events, understands it thoroughly.

When she is quite close to him, so close that if she stirs her dress must touch him, so close that her flower-like face is dangerously near his arm, she whispers, softly:

"I am sorry."

"Are you?" says Luttrell, stupidly, although his heart is throbbing passionately, although every pulse is beating almost to pain. If his life depended upon it, or perhaps because of it, he can frame no more eloquent speech.

"Yes," murmurs Molly, with a thorough comprehension of all he is feeling. "And now we will be friends again, will we not?" Holding out to him a little cool, shy hand.

"Not friends," says the young man, in a low, passionate tone, clasping her hand eagerly: "it is too cold a word. I cannot be your friend. Your lover, your slave, if you will; only let me feel near to you. Molly,"—abandoning her slender fingers for the far sweeter possession of herself, and folding his arms around her with gentle audacity,—"speak to me. Why are you so silent? Why do you not even look at me? You cannot want me to tell you of the love that is consuming me, because you know of it."

"I don't think you ought to speak to me like this at all," says Molly, severely, drawing herself out of his embrace, not hurriedly or angrily, but surely; "I am almost positive you should not; and—and John might not like it."

"I don't care a farthing what John likes," exclaims Luttrell, rather forcibly, giving wings to his manners, as his wrongs of the evening blossom. "What has he or any one to do with it but you and I alone? The question is, do you like it?"

"I am not at all sure that I do," says Molly, doubtfully, with a little distracting shake of her head. "You are so vehement, and I——"

"Don't go on," interrupts he, hastily. "You are going to say something unkind, and I won't listen to it. I know it by your eyes. Darling, why are you so cruel to me? Surely you must care for me, be it ever such a little. To think otherwise would—— But I will not think it. Molly,"—with increasing fervor,—"say you will marry me."

"But indeed I can't," exclaims Miss Massereene, retreating a step or two, and glancing at him furtively from under her long lashes. "At least"—relenting a little, as she sees his face change and whiten at her words—"not yet. It is all so sudden, so unexpected; and you forget I am not accustomed to this sort of thing. Now, the curates"—with an irrepressible smile—"never went on like this: they always behaved modestly and with such propriety."

"'The curates!' What do they know about it?" returns this young man, most unjustly. "Do you suppose I love you like a curate?"

"And yet, when all is told, I suppose a curate is a man," says Molly, uncertainly, as one doubtful of the truth of her assertion, "and a well-behaved one, too. Now, you are quite different; and you have known me such a little time."

"What has time to do with it? The beginning and the ending of the whole matter is this: I love you!"

He is holding her hands and gazing down into her face with all his heart in his eyes, waiting for her next words,—may they not decide his fate?—while she is feeling nothing in the world but a mad desire to break into laughter,—a desire that arises half from nervousness, half from an irrepressible longing to destroy the solemnity of the scene.

"A pinch for stale news," says she, at last, with a frivolity most unworthy of the occasion, but in the softest, merriest whisper.

They are both young. The laugh is contagious. After a moment's struggle with his dignity, he echoes it.

"You can jest," says he: "surely that is a good sign. If you were going to refuse me you would not laugh. Beloved,"—taking her into his fond arms again,—"say one little word to make me happy."

"Will any little word do? Long ago, in the dark ages when I was a child, I remember being asked a riddle à propos of short words. I will ask it to you now. What three letters contain everything in the world? Guess."

"No need to guess: I know. YES would contain everything in the world for me."

"You are wrong, then. It is ALL,—all. Absurd, isn't it? I must have been very young when I thought that clever. But to return: would that little word do you?"

"Say 'Yes,' Molly."

"And if I say 'No,' what then? Will you throw yourself into this small river? Or perhaps hang yourself to the nearest tree? Or, worse still, refuse to speak to me ever again? Or 'go to skin and bone,' as my old nurse used to say I would when I refused a fifth meal in the day? Tell me which?"

"A greater evil than all those would befall me: I should live with no nearer companion than a perpetual regret. But"—with a shudder—"I will not believe myself so doomed. Molly, say what I ask you."

"Well, 'Yes,' then, since you will have it so. Though why you are so bent on your own destruction puzzles me. Do you know you never spoke to me all this evening? I don't believe you love me as well as you say."

"Don't I?" wistfully. Then, with sudden excitement, "I wish with all my heart I did not," he says, "or at least with only half the strength I do. If I could regulate my affections so, I might have some small chance of happiness; but as it is I doubt—I fear. Molly, do you care for me?"

"At times,"—mischievously—"I do—a little."

"And you know I love you?"

"Yes,—it may be,—when it suits you."

"And you,"—tightening his arms round her,—"some time you will love me, my sweet?"

"Yes,—perhaps so,—when it suits me."

"Molly," says Luttrell after a pause, "won't you kiss me?"

As he speaks he stoops, bringing his cheek very close to hers.

"'Kiss you'?" says Molly, shrinking away from him, while flushing and reddening honestly now. "No, I think not. I never in all my life kissed any man but John, and—I don't believe I should like it. No, no; if I cannot be engaged to you without kissing you, I will not be engaged to you at all."

"It shall be as you wish," says Luttrell, very patiently, considering all things.

"You mean it?" Still keeping well away from him, and hesitating about giving the hand he is holding out his to receive.

"Certainly I do."

"And"—anxiously—"you don't mind?"

"Mind?" says he, with wrathful reproach. "Of course I mind. Am I a stick or a stone, do you think? You might as well tell me in so many words of your utter indifference to me as refuse to kiss me."

"Do all women kiss the men they promise to marry?"

"All women kiss the men they love."

"What, whether they ask them or not?"

"Of course I mean when they are asked."

"Even if at the time they happen to be married to somebody else?"

"I don't know anything about that," says Luttrell, growing ashamed of himself and his argument beneath the large, horror-stricken eyes of his companion. "I was merely supposing a case where marriage and love went hand in hand."

"Don't suppose," says Miss Massereene; "there is nothing so tiresome. It is like 'fourthly' and 'fifthly' in a sermon: you never know where it may lead you. Am I to understand that all women want to kiss the man they love?"

"Certainly they do," stoutly.

"How very odd!" says Molly.

After which there is a most decided pause.

Presently, as though she had been pondering all things, she says:

"Well, there is one thing: I don't mind your having your arms round me a bit, not in the least. That must be something. I would quite as soon they were there as not."

"I suppose that is a step in the right direction," says Luttrell, trying not to see the meaning in her words, because too depressed to accept the comic side of it.

"You are unhappy," says Molly, remorsefully, heaving a quickly suppressed sigh. "Why? Because I won't be good to you? Well,"—coloring crimson and leaning her head back against his shoulder with the air of a martyr, so that her face is upturned,—"you may kiss me once, if you wish,—but only once, mind,—because I can't bear to see you miserable."

"No," returns Luttrell, valiantly, refusing by a supreme effort to allow himself to be tempted by a look at her beauty, "I will not kiss you so. Why should you be made unhappy, and by me? Keep such gifts, Molly, until you can bestow them of your own free will."

But Molly is determined to be generous.

"See, I will give you this one freely," she says, with unwonted sweetness, knowing that she is gaining more than she is giving; and thus persuaded, he presses his lips to the warm tender ones so near his own, while for one mad moment he is absurdly happy.

"You really do love me?" asks Molly, presently, as though just awakening to the fact.

"My darling!—my angel!" whispers he, which is conclusive; because when a man can honestly bring himself to believe a woman an angel he must be very far gone indeed.

"I fancy we ought to go in," says Molly, a little later; "they will be wondering where we are."

"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."

"What do you mean by that?" demands he, passionately, drawing her to him, and bending to examine her face in the uncertain light. "Do you suppose I am a boy or a fool, that you so speak to me? Am I so very happy that you deem it necessary to blast my joy like this? or is it merely to try me? Tell me the truth now, at once: do you mean to throw me over?"

"I do not," with surprise. "What has put such an idea into your head? If I did, why be engaged to you at any time? It is a great deal more likely, when you come to know me better, that you will throw me over."

"Don't build your hopes on that," says Luttrell, grimly, with a rather sad smile. "I am not the sort of fellow likely to commit suicide; and to resign you would be to resign life."

"Well," says Molly, "if I am ever to say anything on the subject I may as well say it now; and I must confess I think you are behaving very foolishly. I may be—I probably am—good to look at; but what is the use of that? You, who have seen so much of the world, have, of course, known people ten times prettier than I am, and—perhaps—fonder of you. And still you come all the way down here to this stupid place to fall in love with me, a girl without a penny! I really think," winds up Molly, growing positively melancholy over his lack of sense, "it is the most absurd thing I ever heard in my life."

"I wish I could argue with your admirable indifference," says he, bitterly.

"If I was indifferent I would not argue," says Molly, offended. "I would not trouble myself to utter a word of warning. You ought to be immensely obliged to me instead of sneering and wrinkling up all your forehead into one big frown. Are you going to be angry again? I do hope," says Molly, anxiously, "you are not naturally ill-tempered, because, if so, on no account would I have anything to do with you."

"I am not," replies he, compelled to laughter by her perturbed face. "Reassure yourself. I seldom forget myself in this way. And you?"

"Oh, I have a fearful temper," says Molly, with a charming smile; "that is why I want to make sure of yours. Because two tyrants in one house would infallibly bring the roof about their ears. Now, Mr. Luttrell, that I have made this confession, will you still tell me you are not frightened?"

"Nothing frightens me," whispers he, holding her to his heart and pressing his lips to her fair, cool cheek, "since you are my own,—my sweet,—my beloved. But call me Tedcastle, won't you?"

"It is too long a name."

"Then alter it, and call me——"

"Teddy? I think I like that best; and perhaps I shall have it all to myself."

"I am afraid not," laughing. "All the fellows in the regiment christened me 'Teddy' before I had been in a week."

"Did they? Well, never mind; it only shows what good taste they had. The name just suits you, you are so fair and young, and handsome," says Molly, patting his cheek with considerable condescension. "Now, one thing more before we go in to receive our scolding: you are not to make love to me again—not even to mention the word—until a whole week has passed: promise."

"I could not."

"You must."

"Well, then, it will be a pie-crust promise."

"No, I forbid you to break it. I can endure a little of it now and again," says Molly, with intense seriousness, "but to be made love to always, every day, would kill me."

[ ]

CHAPTER VII.

"Then they sat down and talked

Of their friends at home ...

* * * *

And related the wondrous adventure."

—Courtship of Miles Standish.

"Do exert yourself," says Molly. "I never saw any one so lazy. You don't pick one to my ten."

"I can't see how you make that out," says her companion in an injured tone. "For the last three minutes you have sat with your hands in your lap arguing about what you don't understand in the least, while I have been conscientiously slaving; and before that you ate two for every one you put in the basket."

"I never heard any one talk so much as you do, when once fairly started," says Molly. "Here, open your mouth until I put in this strawberry; perhaps it will stop you."

"And I find it impossible to do anything with this umbrella," says Luttrell, still ungrateful, eying with much distaste the ancient article he holds aloft: "it is abominably in the way. I wouldn't mind if you wanted it, but you cannot with that gigantic hat you are wearing. May I put it down?"

"Certainly not, unless you wish me to have a sun-stroke. Do you?"

"No, but I really think——"

"Don't think," says Molly: "it is too fatiguing; and if you get used up now, I don't see what Letitia will do for her jam."

"Why do people make jam?" asks Luttrell, despairingly; "they wouldn't if they had the picking of it: and nobody ever eats it, do they?"

"Yes, I do. I love it. Let that thought cheer you on to victory. Oh! here is another fat one, such a monster. Open your mouth again, wide, and you shall have it, because you really do begin to look weak."

They are sitting on the strawberry bank, close together, with a small square basket between them, and the pretty red and white fruit hanging from its dainty stalks all round them.

Molly, in a huge hat that only partially conceals her face and throws a shadow over her glorious eyes, is intent upon her task, while Luttrell, sitting opposite to her, holds over her head the very largest family umbrella ever built. It is evidently an old and esteemed friend, that has worn itself out in the Massereenes' service, and now shows daylight here and there through its covering where it should not. A troublesome scorching ray comes through one of these impromptu air-holes and alights persistently on his face; at present it is on his nose, and makes that feature appear a good degree larger than Nature, who has been very generous to it, ever intended.

It might strike a keen observer that Mr. Luttrell doesn't like the umbrella; either it or the wicked sunbeams, or the heat generally, is telling on him, slowly but surely; he has a depressed and melancholy air.

"Is it good?" asks Molly, à propos of the strawberry. "There, you need not bite my finger. Will you have another? You really do look very badly. You don't think you are going to faint, do you?"

"Molly," taking no notice of her graceful badinage, "why don't you get your grandfather to invite you to Herst Royal for the autumn? Could you not manage it in some way? I wish it could be done."

"So do I," returns she, frankly, "but there is not the remotest chance of it. It would be quite as likely that the skies should fall. Why, he does not even acknowledge me as a member of the family."

"Old brute!" says Luttrell from his heart.

"Well, it has always been rather a regret to me, his neglect, I mean," says Molly, thoughtfully, "and besides, though I know it is poor-spirited of me, I confess I have the greatest longing to see my grandfather."

"To 'see' your grandfather?"

"Exactly."

"Do you mean to tell me," growing absolutely animated through his surprise, "that you have never been face to face with him?"

"Never. I thought you knew that. Why, how amazed you look! Is there anything the matter with him? is he without arms, or legs? or has he had his nose shot off in any campaign? If so, break it to me gently, and spare me the shock I might experience, if ever I make my curtsey to him."

"It isn't that," says Tedcastle: "there's nothing wrong with him beyond old age, and a beastly temper; but it seems so odd that, living all your life in the very next county to his, you should never have met."

"It is not so odd, after all, when you come to think of it," says Molly, "considering he never goes anywhere, as I have heard, and that I lead quite as lively an existence. But is he not a stern old thing, to keep up a quarrel for so many years, especially as it wasn't my fault, you know? I didn't insist on being born. Poor mother! I think she was quite right to run away with papa, when she loved him."

"Quite right," enthusiastically.

"What made her crime so unpardonable was the fact that she was engaged to another man at the time, some rich parti chosen by her father, whom she thought she liked well enough until she saw papa, and then she knew, and threw away everything for her love; and she did well," says Molly, with more excitement than would be expected from her on a sentimental subject.

"Still, it was rather hard on the first man, don't you think?" says Luttrell. There is rather less enthusiasm in his tone this time.

"One should go to the wall, you know," argues Molly, calmly, "and I for my part would not hesitate about it. Now, let us suppose I am engaged to you without caring very much about you, you know, and all that, and supposing then I saw another I liked better,—why, then, I honestly confess I would not hold to my engagement with you for an hour!"

Here that wicked sunbeam, with a depravity unlooked for, falling straight through the chink of the umbrella into Mr. Luttrell's eye, maddens him to such a degree that he rises precipitately, shuts the cause of his misfortunes with a bang, and turns on Molly.

"I won't hold it up another instant," he says; "you needn't think it. I wonder Massereene wouldn't keep a decent umbrella in his hall."

"What's the matter with it? I see nothing indecent about it: I think it a very charming umbrella," says Molly, examining the article in question with a critical eye.

"Well, at all events, this orchard is oppressive. If you don't want to kill me, you will leave it, and come to the wood, where we may know what shade means!"

"Nonsense!" returns Molly, unmoved. "It is delicious here, and I won't stir. How can you talk in that wild way about no shade, when you have this beautiful apple-tree right over your head? Come and sit at this side; perhaps," with a smile, "you will feel more comfortable—next to me?"

Thus beguiled, he yields, and seats himself beside her—very much beside her—and reconciles himself to his fate.

"I wish you would remember," she says, presently, "that you have nothing on your head. I would not be rash if I were you. Take my advice and open the umbrella again, or you will assuredly be having a sun-stroke."

This is one for him and two for herself; and—need I say?—the family friend is once more unfurled, and waves to and fro majestically in the soft wind.

"Now, don't you feel better?" asks Molly, placing her two fingers beneath his chin, and turning his still rather angry face toward her.

"I do," replies he; and a smile creeping up into his eyes slays the chagrin that still lingers there, but half perdu.

"And—are you happy?"

"Very."

"Intensely happy?"

"Yes."

"So much so that you could not be more so?"

"Yes," replies he again, laughing, and slipping his arm round her waist. "And you?" tenderly.

"Oh, I'm all right!" says Miss Massereene, with much graciousness, but rather disheartening vivacity. "And now begin, Teddy, and tell me all about Herst Royal and its inmates. First, is it a pretty place?"

"It is a magnificent place. But for its attractions, and his twenty thousand pounds a year, I don't believe your grandfather would be known by any one; he is such a regular old bear. Yet he is fond of society, and is never content until he has the house crammed with people, from garret to basement, to whom he makes himself odiously disagreeable whenever occasion offers. I have an invitation there for September and October."

"Will you go?"

"I don't know. I have hardly made up my mind. I have been asked to the Careys, and the Brownes also; and I rather fancy the Brownes. They are the most affording people I ever met: one always puts in such a good time at their place. But for one reason I would go there."

"What reason?"

"That Herst is so much nearer to Brooklyn," with a fond smile. "And, perhaps, if I came over once or twice, you would be glad to see me?"

"Oh, would I not!" cries Molly, her faultless face lighting up at his words. "You may be sure of it. You won't forget, will you? And you will come early, so as to spend the entire day here, and tell me all about the others who will be staying there. Do you know my cousin Marcia?"

"Miss Amherst? Yes. She is very handsome, but too statuesque to please me."

"Am I better-looking?"

"Ten thousand times."

"And Philip Shadwell; he is my cousin also. Do you know him?"

"Very intimately. He is handsome also, but of a dark Moorish sort of beauty. Not a popular man, by any means. Too reserved,—cold,—I don't know what it is. Have you any other cousins?"

"Not on my mother's side. Grandpa had but three children, you know,—my mother, and Philip's mother, and Marcia's father: he married an Italian actress, which must have been a terrible mésalliance, and yet Marcia is made much of, while I am not even recognized. Does it not sound unfair?"

"Unaccountable. Especially as I have often heard your mother was his favorite child!"

"Perhaps that explains his harshness. To be deceived by one we love engenders the bitterest hatred of all. And yet how could he hate poor mamma? John says she had the most beautiful, lovable face."

"I can well believe it," replied he, gazing with undisguised admiration upon the perfect profile beside him.

"And Marcia will be an heiress, I suppose?"

"She and Philip will divide everything, people say, the place, of course, going to Philip. Lucky he! Any one might envy him. You know they both live there entirely, although Marcia's mother is alive and resides somewhere abroad. Philip was in some dragoon regiment, but sold out about two years ago: debt, I fancy, was the cause, or something like it."

"Marcia is the girl you ought to have fallen in love with, Ted."

"No, thank you; I very much prefer her cousin. Besides, I should have no chance, as she and Philip are engaged to each other: they thought it a pity to divide the twenty thousand pounds a year. Do you know, Molly, I never knew what it was to covet my neighbor's goods until I met you? so you have that to answer for; but it does seem hard that one man should be so rich, and another so poor."

"Are you poor, Teddy?"

"Very. Will that make you like me less?"

"Probably it will make me like you more," replies she, with a bewitching smile, stroking down the hand that supports the obnoxious umbrella (the other is supporting herself) almost tenderly. "It is only the very nicest men that haven't a farthing in the world. I have no money either, and if I had I could not keep it: so we are well met."

"But think what a bad match you are making," says he, regarding her curiously. "Did you never ask yourself whether I was well off, or otherwise?"

"Never!" with a gay laugh. "If I were going to marry you next week or so, it might occur to me to ask the question; but everything is so far away, what does it signify? If you had the mines of Golconda, I should not like you a bit better than I do."

"My own darling! Oh, Molly, how you differ from most girls one meets. Now, in London, once they find out I am only the third son, they throw me over without warning, and generally manage to forget the extra dance they had promised, while their mothers look upon me, and such as me, as a pestilence. And you, sweetheart, you never once asked me how much a year I had!"

"You have your pay, I suppose?" says Molly, doubtfully. "Is that much?"

"Very handsome," replies he, laughing; "a lieutenant's pay generally is. But I have something besides that; about as much as most fellows would spend on their stabling. I have precisely five hundred and fifty pounds a year, neither more nor less, and I owe two hundred pounds. Does not that sound tempting? The two hundred pounds I owe don't count, because the governor will pay up that; he always does in the long run; and I haven't asked him for anything out of the way now for fully eight months." He says this with a full consciousness of his own virtue.

"I call five hundred and fifty pounds a year a great deal," says Molly, with a faint ring of disappointment in her tone. "I fancied you downright poor from what you said. Why, you might marry to-morrow morning on that."

"So I might," agrees he, eagerly; "and so I will. That is, not to-morrow, exactly, but as soon as ever I can."

"Perhaps you will," says Molly, slowly; "but, if so, it will not be me you will marry. Bear that in mind. No, we won't argue the matter: as far as I am concerned it doesn't admit of argument." Then recurring to the former topic: "Why, John has only seven hundred pounds, and he has all the children and Letitia and me to provide for, and he keeps Lovat—that is the eldest boy—at a very good school as well. How could you call yourself poor, with five hundred pounds a year?"

"It ought to be six hundred and fifty pounds; but I thought it a pity to burden myself with superfluous wealth in my palmy days, so I got rid of it," says he, laughing.

"Gambling?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so."

"Cards?"

"No, horses. It was in India,—stupid part, you know, and nothing to do. Potts suggested military races, and we all caught at it. And—and I didn't have much luck, you know," winds up Luttrell, ingenuously.

"I don't like that young man," says Molly, severely. "You are always talking of him, and he is my idea of a ne'er-do-weel. Your Mr. Potts seems never to be out of mischief. He is the head and front of every offense."

"Are you talking of Potts?" says her lover, in grieved amazement. "A better fellow never stepped. Nothing underhand about Potts. When you see him you will agree with me."

"I will not. I can see him in my mind's eye already. I know he is tall, and dark, and insinuating, and, in fact, a Mephistopheles."

Luttrell roars.

"Oh, if you could but see Potts!" he says. "He is the best fellow in the world, but—— He ought to be called Rufus: his hair is red, his face is red, his nose is red, he is all red," finishes Tedcastle, with a keen enjoyment of his friend's misfortunes.

"Poor man," kindly; "I forgive him his small sins; he must be sufficiently punished by his ugliness. Did you like being in India?"

"Pretty well. At times it was rather slow, and our regiment has somehow gone to the dogs of late. No end of underbred fellows have joined, with quite too much the linen-draper about them to be tolerated."

"How sad! Your candor amazes me. I thought every soldier made it a point to be enthusiastic over his brother soldiers, whether by being so he lied or not."

"Then look upon me as an exception. The fact is, I grew rather discontented about three years ago when my greatest chum sold out and got married. You have no idea how lost a fellow feels when that happens. But for Potts I might have succumbed."

"Potts! what a sweet name it is!" says Molly, mischievously.

"What's in a name?" with a laugh. "He was generally called Mrs. Luttrell, we were so much together: so his own didn't matter. But I missed Penthony Stafford awfully."

"And Mrs. Penthony, did you like her?"

"Lady Stafford, you mean? Penthony is a baronet. Yes, I like her immensely, and the whole affair was so peculiar. You won't believe me when I tell you that, though they have now been married for three years, her husband has never seen her."

"But that would be impossible."

"It is a fact for all that. Shall I tell you the story? Most people know it by this, I think: so I am breaking no faith by telling it to you."

"Never mind whether you are or not," says Molly: "I must and will hear it now."

"Well, to begin with, you must understand that she and her husband are first cousins. Have you mastered that fact?"

"Though not particularly gifted, I think I have. I rather flatter myself I could master more than that," says Molly, significantly, giving his ear a pinch, short but sharp.

"She is also a cousin of mine, though not so near. Well, about three years ago, when she was only Cecil Hargrave, and extremely poor, an uncle of theirs died, leaving his entire property, which was very considerable, between them, on the condition that they should marry each other. If they refused, it was to go to a lunatic asylum, or a refuge for dogs, or something equally uninteresting."

"He would have made a very successful lunatic himself, it seems to me. What a terrible condition!"

"Now, up to this they had been utter strangers to each other, had never even been face to face, and being told they must marry whether they liked it or not, or lose the money, they of course on the spot conceived an undying hatred for each other. Penthony even refused to see his possible wife, when urged to do so, and Cecil, on her part, quite as strenuously opposed a meeting. Still, they could not make up their minds to let such a good property slip through their fingers."

"It was hard."

"Things dragged on so for three months, and then, Cecil, being a woman, was naturally the one to see a way out of it. She wrote to Sir Penthony saying, if he would sign a deed giving her a third of the money, and promising never to claim her as his wife, or interfere with her in any way, beyond having the marriage ceremony read between them, she would marry him."

"And he?" asks Molly, eagerly, bending forward in her excitement.

"Why, he agreed, of course. What was it to him? he had never seen her, and had no wish to make her acquaintance. The document was signed, the license was procured. On the morning of the wedding, he looked up a best man, and went down to the country, saw nothing of his bride until a few minutes before the service began, when she entered the room covered with so thick a veil that he saw quite as little of her then, was married, made his best bow to the new Lady Stafford, and immediately returning to town, set out a few days later for a foreign tour, which has lasted ever since. Now, is not that a thrilling romance, and have I not described it graphically?"

"The 'Polite Story-teller' sinks into insignificance beside you: such a flow of language deserves a better audience. But really, Teddy, I never heard so extraordinary a story. To marry a woman, and never have the curiosity to raise her veil to see whether she was ugly or pretty! It is inconceivable! He must be made of ice."

"He is warm-hearted, and one of the jolliest fellows you could meet. Curiously enough, from a letter he wrote me just before starting he gave me the impression that he believed his wife to be not only plain, but vulgar in appearance."

"And is she?"

"She is positively lovely. Rather small, perhaps, but exquisitely fair, with large laughing blue eyes, and the most fetching manner. If he had raised her veil, I don't believe he would ever have gone abroad to cultivate the dusky nigger."

"What became of her,—'poor maid forlorn?'"

"She gave up 'milking the cow with the crumpled horn,' and the country generally, and came up to London, where she took a house, went into society, and was the rage all last season."

"Why did you not tell him how pretty she was?" impatiently.

"Because I was in Ireland at the time on leave, and heard nothing of it until I received that letter telling of the marriage and his departure. I was thunderstruck, you may be sure, but it was too late then to interfere. Some one told me the other day he is on his way home."

"'When Greek meets Greek' we know what happens," says Molly. "I think their meeting will be awkward."

"Rather. She is to be at Herst this autumn: she was a ward of your grandfather's."

"Don't fall in love with her, Teddy."

"How can I, when you have put it out of my power? There is no room in my heart for any one but Molly Bawn. Besides, it would be energy wasted, as she is encased in steel. A woman in her equivocal position, and possessed of so much beauty, might be supposed to find it difficult to steer her bark safely through all the temptations of a London season; yet the flattery she received, and all the devotion that was laid at her feet, touched her no more than if she was ninety, instead of twenty-three."

"Yet what a risk it is! How will it be some day if she falls in love? as they say all people do once in their lives."

"Why, then, she will have her mauvais quart-d'heure, like the rest of us. Up to the present she has enjoyed her life to the utmost, and finds everything couleur de rose."

"Would it not be charming," says Molly, with much empressement, "if, when Sir Penthony comes home and sees her, they should both fall in love with each other?"

"Charming, but highly improbable. The fates are seldom so propitious. It is far more likely they will fall madly in love with two other people, and be unhappy ever after."

"Oh, cease such raven's croaking," says Molly, laying her hand upon his lips. "I will not listen to it. Whatever the Fates may be, Love, I know, is kind."

"Is it?" asks he, wistfully. "You are my love—are you kind?"

"And you are my lover," returns Molly. "And you most certainly are not kind, for that is the third time you have all but run that horrid umbrella into my left eye. Surely, because you hold it up for your own personal convenience is no reason why you should make it an instrument of torture to every one else. Now you may finish picking those strawberries without me, for I shall not stay here another instant in deadly fear of being blinded for life."

With this speech—so flagrantly unjust as to render her companion dumb—she rises, and catching up her gown, runs swiftly away from him down the garden-path, and under the wealthy trees, until at last the garden-gate receives her in its embrace and hides her from his view.

[ ]

CHAPTER VIII.

"Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me,

Knowing thy heart, torment me with disdain."

—Shakespeare.

All round one side of Brooklyn, and edging on to the retired butcher's country residence, or rather what he is pleased to term, with a knowing jerk of the thumb over his right shoulder, his "little villar in the south," stretches a belt of trees, named by courtesy "the wood." It is a charming spot, widening and thickening toward one corner, which has been well named the "Fairies' Glen," where crowd together all the "living grasses" and wild flowers that thrive and bloom so bravely when nursed on the earth's bosom.

On one side rise gray rocks, cold and dead, save for the little happy life that, springing up above, flows over them, leaping, laughing from crag to crag, bedewing leaf and blossom, and dashing its gem-like spray over all the lichens and velvet mosses and feathery ferns that grow luxuriantly to hide the rugged jags of stone.

Here, at night, the owls delight to hoot, the bats go whirring past, the moonbeams surely cast their kindest rays; by day the pigeons coo from the topmost boughs their tales of love, while squirrels sit blinking merrily, or run their Silvios on their Derby days.

Just now it is neither night nor garish day, but a soft, early twilight, and on the sward that glows as green as Erin's, sit Molly and her attendant slave.

"The reason I like you," says Molly, reverting to something that has gone before, and tilting back her hat so that all her pretty face is laid bare to the envious sunshine, while the soft rippling locks on her forehead make advances to each other through the breeze, "the reason I like you,—no,"—seeing a tendency on his part to creep nearer, "no, stay where you are. I only said I liked you. If I had mentioned the word love, then indeed—but, as it is, it is far too warm to admit of any endearments."

"You are right,—as you always are," says Luttrell, with suspicious amiability, being piqued.

"You interrupted me," says Miss Massereene, leaning back comfortably and raising her exquisite eyes in lazy admiration of the green and leafy tangle far above her. "I was going to say that the reason I like you so much is because you look so young, quite as young as I do,—more so, indeed, I think."

"It is a poor case," says Luttrell, "when a girl of nineteen looks older than a man of twenty-seven."

"That is not the way to put it. It is a charming and novel case when a man of twenty-seven looks younger than a girl of nineteen."

"How much younger?" asks Luttrell, who is still sufficiently youthful to have a hankering after mature age. "Am I fourteen or nine years old in your estimation?"

"Don't let us dispute the point," says Molly, "and don't get cross. I see you are on for a hot argument, and I never could follow even a mild one. I think you young, and you should be glad of it, as it is the one good thing I see about you. As a rule I prefer dark men,—but for their unhappy knack of looking old from their cradles,—and have a perfect passion for black eyes, black skin, black locks, and a general appearance of fierceness! Indeed, I have always thought, up to this, that there was something about a fair man almost ridiculous. Have not you?"

Here she brings her eyes back to the earth again, and fastens them upon him with the most engaging frankness.

"No. I confess it never occurred to me before," returns Luttrell, coloring slightly through his Saxon skin.

Silence. If there is any silent moment in the throbbing summer. Above them the faint music of the leaves, below the breathing of the flowers, the hum of insects. All the air is full of the sweet warblings of innumerable songsters. Mingling with these is the pleasant drip, drip of the falling water.

A great lazy bee falls, as though no longer able to sustain its mighty frame, right into Miss Massereene's lap, and lies there humming. With a little start she shakes it off, almost fearing to touch it with her dainty rose-white fingers.

Thus rudely roused, she speaks:

"Are you asleep?" she asks, not turning her head in her companion's direction.

"No," coldly; "are you?"

"Yes, almost, and dreaming."

"Dreams are the children of an idle brain," quotes he, somewhat maliciously.

"Yes?" sweetly. "And so you really have read your Shakespeare? And can actually apply it every now and then with effect, to the utter confusion of your friends? But I think you might have spared me. Teddy!" bending forward and casting upon him a bewitching, tormenting, adorable glance from under her dark lashes, "if you bite your moustache any harder it will come off, and then what will become of me?"

With a laugh Luttrell flings away the fern he has been reducing to ruin, and rising, throws himself upon the grass at her feet.

"Why don't I hate you?" he says, vehemently. "Why cannot I feel even decently angry with you? You torment and charm in the same breath. At times I say to myself, 'She is cold, heartless, unfeeling,' and then a word, a look—Molly," seizing her cool, slim little hand as it lies passive in her lap, "tell me, do you think you will ever—I do not mean to-morrow, or in a week, or a month, but in all the long years to come, do you think you will ever love me?" As he finishes speaking, he presses his lips with passionate tenderness to her hand.

"Now, who gave you leave to do that?" asks Molly, à propos of the kissing.

"Never mind: answer me."

"But I do mind very much indeed. I mind dreadfully."

"Well, then, I apologize, and I am very sorry, and I won't do it again: is that enough?"

"No, the fact still remains," gazing at her hand with a little pout, as though the offending kiss were distinctly visible; "and I don't want it."

"But what can be done?"

"I think—you had better—take it back again," says she, the pretended pout dissolving into an irresistible smile, as she slips her fingers with a sudden unexpected movement into his; after which she breaks into a merry laugh."

"And now tell me," he persists, holding them close prisoners, and bestowing a loving caress upon each separately.

"Whether I love you? How can I, when I don't know myself? Perhaps at the end I may be sure. When I lie a-dying you must come to me, and bend over me, and say, 'Molly Bawn, do you love me?' And I shall whisper back with my last breath, 'yes' or 'no,' as the case may be."

"Don't talk of dying," he says, with a shudder, tightening his clasp.

"Why not? as we must die."

"But not now, not while we are young and happy. Afterward, when old age creeps on us and we look on love as weariness, it will not matter."

"To me, that is the horror of it," with a quick distasteful shiver, leaning forward in her earnestness, "to feel that sooner or later there will be no hope; that we must go, whether with or without our own will,—and it is never with it, is it?"

"Never, I suppose."

"It does not frighten me so much to think that in a month, or perhaps next year, or at any moment, I may die,—there is a blessed uncertainty about that,—but to know that, no matter how long I linger, the time will surely come when no prayers, no entreaties, will avail. They say of one who has cheated death for seventy years, that he has had a good long life: taking that, then, as an average, I have just fifty-one years to live, only half that to enjoy. Next year it will be fifty, then forty-nine, and so on until it comes down to one. What shall I do then?"

"My own darling, how fanciful you are! your hands have grown cold as ice. Probably when you are seventy you will consider yourself a still fascinating person of middle age, and look upon these thoughts of to-day as the sickly fancies of an infant. Do not let us talk about it any more. Your face is white."

"Yes," says Molly, recovering herself with a sigh, "it is the one thing that horrifies me. John is religious, so is Letty, while I—oh, that I could find pleasure in it! You see," speaking after a slight pause, with a smile, "I am at heart a rebel, and hate to obey. Mind you never give me an order! How good it would be to be young, and gay, and full of easy laughter, always,—to have lovers at command, to have some one at my feet forever!"

"'Some one,'" sadly. "Would any one do? Oh, Molly, can you not be satisfied with me?"

"How can I be sure? At present—yes," running her fingers lightly down the earnest, handsome face upraised to hers, apparently quite forgetful of her late emotion.

"Well, at all events," says the young man, with the air of one who is determined to make the best of a bad bargain, "there is no man you like better than me."

"At present,—no," says the incorrigible Molly.

"You are the greatest flirt I ever met in my life," exclaims he, with sudden anger.

"Who? I?"

"Yes,—you," vehemently.

A pause. They are much farther apart by this time, and are looking anywhere but at each other. Molly has her lap full of daisies, and is stringing them into a chain in rather an absent fashion; while Luttrell, who is too angry to pretend indifference, is sitting with gloom on his brow and a straw in his mouth, which latter he is biting vindictively.

"I don't believe I quite understand you," says Molly at length.

"Do you not? I cannot remember saying anything very difficult of comprehension."

"I must be growing stupid, then. You have accused me of flirting; and how am I to understand that, I who never flirted? How should I? I would not know how."

"You must allow me to differ with you; or, at all events, let me say your imitation of it is highly successful."

"But," with anxious hesitation, "what is flirting?"

"Pshaw!" wrathfully, "have you been waiting for me to tell you? It is trying to make a fool of a fellow, neither more nor less. You are pretending to love me, when you know in your heart you don't care that for me." The "that" is both forcible and expressive, and has reference to an indignant sound made by his thumb and his second finger.

"I was not aware that I ever 'pretended to love' you," replies Molly, in a tone that makes him wince.

"Well, let us say no more about it," cries he, springing to his feet, as though unable longer to endure his enforced quietude. "If you don't care for me, you don't, you know, and that is all about it. I dare say I shall get over it; and if not, why, I shall not be the only man in the world made miserable for a woman's amusement."

Molly has also risen, and, with her long daisy chain hanging from both her hands, is looking a perfect picture of injured innocence; although in truth she is honestly sorry for her cruel speech.

"I don't believe you know how unkind you are," she says, with a suspicion of tears in her voice, whether feigned or real he hardly dares conjecture. Feeling herself in the wrong, she seeks meanly to free herself from the false position by placing him there in her stead.

"Do not let us speak about unkindness, or anything else," says the young man, impatiently. "Of what use is it? It is the same thing always: I am obnoxious to you; we cannot put together two sentences without coming to open war."

"But whose fault was it this time? Think of what you accuse me! I did not believe you could be so rude to me!" with reproachful emphasis.

Here she directs a slow lingering glance at him from her violet eyes. There are visible signs of relenting about her companion. He colors, and persistently refuses, after the first involuntary glance, to allow his gaze to meet hers again; which is, of all others, the surest symptom of a coming rout. There are some eyes that can do almost anything with a man. Molly's eyes are of this order. They are her strongest point; and were they her sole charm, were she deaf and dumb, I believe it would be possible to her, by the power of their expressive beauty alone, to draw most hearts into her keeping.

"Did you mean what you said just now, that you had no love for me?" he asks, with a last vain effort to be stern and unforgiving. "Am I to believe that I am no more to you than any other man?"

"Believe nothing," murmurs she, coming nearer to lay a timid hand upon his arm, and raising her face to his, "except this, that I am your own Molly."

"Are you?" cries he, in a subdued tone, straining her to his heart, and speaking with an emotional indrawing of the breath that betrays more than his words how deeply he is feeling, "my very own? Nay, more than that, Molly, you are my all, my world, my life: if ever you forget me, or give me up for another, you will kill me: remember that."

"I will remember it. I will never do it," replies she, soothingly, the touch of motherhood that is in all good women coming to the front as she sees his agitation. "Why should I, when you are such a dear old boy? Now come and sit down again, and be reasonable. See, I will tie you up with my flowery chain as punishment for your behavior, and"—with a demure smile—"the kiss you stole in the melée without my permission."

"This is the chain by which I hold you," he says, rather sadly, surveying his wrists, round which the daisies cling. "The links that bind me to you are made of sterner stuff. Sweetheart," turning his handsome, singularly youthful face to hers, and speaking with an entreaty that savors strongly of despair, "do not let your beauty be my curse!"

"Why, who is fanciful now?" says Molly, making a little grimace at him. "And truly, to hear you speak, one must believe love is blind. Is it Venus," saucily, "or Helen of Troy, I most closely resemble? or am I 'something more exquisite still'? It puzzles me why you should think so very highly of my personal charms. Ted," leaning forward to look into her lover's eyes, "tell me this. Have you been much away? Abroad, I mean, on the Continent and that?"

"Well, yes, pretty much so."

"Have you been to Paris?"

"Oh, yes, several times."

"Brussels?"

"Yes."

"Vienna?"

"No. I wait to go there with you."

"Rome?"

"Yes, twice. The governor was fond of sending us abroad between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five,—to enlarge our minds, he said; to get rid of us, he meant."

"Are there many of you?"

"An awful lot. I would be ashamed to say how many. Ours was indeed a 'numerous father.'"

"He isn't dead?" asks Molly, in a low tone befitting the occasion in case he should be.

"Oh no: he is alive and kicking," replies Mr. Luttrell, with more force than elegance. "And I hope he will keep on so for years to come. He is about the best friend I have, or am likely to have."

"I hope he won't keep up the kicking part of it," says Molly, with a delicious laugh that ripples through the air and shows her utter enjoyment of her own wit. Not to laugh when Molly laughs, is impossible; so Luttrell joins her, and they both make merry over his vulgarity. In all the world, what is there sweeter than the happy, penetrating, satisfying laughter of unhurt youth?

"Lucky you, to have seen so much already," says Molly, presently, with an envious sigh; "and yet," with a view to self-support, "what good has it done you? Not one atom. After all your traveling you can do nothing greater than fall absurdly in love with a village maiden. Will your father call that enlarging your mind?"

"I hope so," concealing his misgivings on the point. "But why put it so badly? Instead of village maiden, say the loveliest girl I ever met."

"What!" cries Molly, the most naïve delight and satisfaction animating her tone; "after going through France, Germany, Italy, and India, you can honestly say I am the loveliest woman you ever met?"

"You put it too mildly," says Luttrell, raising himself on his elbow to gaze with admiration at the charming face above him, "I can say more. You are ten thousand times the loveliest woman I ever met."

Molly smiles, nay, more, she fairly dimples. Try as she will and does, she cannot conceal the pleasure it gives her to hear her praises sung.

"Why, then I am a 'belle,' a 'toast,'" she says, endeavoring unsuccessfully to see her image in the little basin of water that has gathered at the foot of the rocks; "while you," turning to run five white fingers over his hair caressingly, and then all down his face, "you are the most delightful person I ever met. It is so easy to believe what you tell one, and so pleasant. I have half a mind to—kiss you!"

"Don't stop there: have a whole mind," says Luttrell, eagerly. "Kiss me at once, before the fancy evaporates."

"No," holding him back with one lazy finger (he is easy to be repulsed), "on second thought I will reserve my caress. Some other time, when you are good,—perhaps. By the bye, Ted, did you really mean you would take me to Vienna?"

"Yes, if you would care to go there."

"Care? that is not the question. It will cost a great deal of money to get there, won't it? Shall we be able to afford it?"

"No doubt the governor will stand to me, and give a check for the occasion," says Luttrell, warming to the subject. "Anyhow, you shall go, if you wish it."

"Wait until your father hears you have wedded a pauper, and then you will see what a check you will get," says Miss Massereene, with a contemptible attempt at a joke.

"A pun!" says Luttrell, springing to his feet with a groan; "that means a pinch. So prepare."

"I forbid you," cries she, inwardly quaking, and, rising hurriedly, stands well away from him, with her petticoats caught together in one hand ready for flight. "I won't allow you. Don't attempt to touch me."

"It is the law of the land," declares he, advancing on her, while she as steadily retreats.

"Dear Teddy, good Teddy," cries she, "spare me this time, and I will never do it again—no, not though it should tremble forever on the tip of my tongue. As you are strong, be merciful. Do forgive me this once."

"Impossible."

"Then I defy you," retorts Miss Massereene, who, having manœuvred until she has placed a good distance between herself and the foe, now turns, and flies through the trees, making very successful running for the open beyond. Not until they are within full view of the house does he manage to come up with her. And then the presence of John sunning himself on the hall-door step, surrounded by his family, effectually prevents her ever obtaining that richly-deserved punishment.

[ ]

CHAPTER IX.

"After long years."

It is raining, not only raining, but pouring. All the gracious sunshine of yesterday is obliterated, forgotten, while in its place the sullen raindrops dash themselves with suppressed fury against the window-panes. Huge drops they are, swollen with the hidden rage of many days, that fall, and burst heavily, and make the casements tremble.

Outside, the flowers droop and hang their pretty heads in sad wonder at this undeserved Nemesis that has overtaken them. Along the sides of the graveled paths small rivulets run frightened. There is no song of birds in all the air. Only the young short grass uprears itself, and, drinking in with eager greediness the welcome but angry shower, refuses to bend its neck beneath the yoke.

"How I hate a wet day!" says Luttrell, moodily, for the twentieth time, staring blankly out of the deserted school-room window, where he and Molly have been yawning, moping for the last half-hour.

"Do you? I love it," replies she, out of a sheer spirit of contradiction; as, if there is one thing she utterly abhors it is the idea of rain.

"If I said I loved it, you would say the reverse," says he, laughing, not feeling equal to the excitement of a quarrel.

"Without doubt," replies she, laughing too: so that a very successful opening is rashly neglected. "Surely it cannot keep on like this all day," she says, presently, in a dismal tone, betraying by her manner the falsity of her former admiration: "we shall have a dry winter if it continues much longer. Has any wise man yet discovered how much rain the clouds are capable of containing at one time? It would be such a blessing if they had: then we might know the worst, and make up our minds to it."

"Drop a line to the clerk of the weather office; he might make it his business to find out if you asked him."

"Is that a joke?" with languid disgust. "And you professed yourself indignant with me yesterday when I perpetrated a really superior one! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I would not condescend to anything so feeble."

"That reminds me I have never yet paid you off for that misdemeanor. Now, when time is hanging so heavily on my hands, is a most favorable opportunity to pay the debt. I embrace it. And you too. So 'prepare for cavalry.'"

"A fig for all the hussars in Europe," cries Molly, with indomitable courage.

Meantime, Letitia and John in the morning room—that in a grander house would have been designated a boudoir—are holding a hot discussion.

Lovat, the eldest son, being the handsomest and by far the most scampish of the children, is of course his mother's idol. His master, however, having written to say that up to this, in spite of all the trouble that has been taken with him, he has evinced a far greater disposition for cricket and punching his companions' heads than for his Greek and Latin, Lovat's father had given it as his opinion that Lovat deserves a right good flogging; while Lovat's mother maintains that all noble, high-spirited boys are "just like that," and asks Mr. Massereene, with the air of a Q. C., whether he never felt a distaste for the dead languages.

Mr. Massereene replying that he never did, that he was always a model boy, and never anywhere but at the head of his class, his wife instantly declares she doesn't believe a word of it, and most unfairly rakes up a dead-and-gone story, in which Mr. Massereene figures as the principal feature, and is discovered during school hours on the top of a neighbor's apple-tree, with a long-suffering but irate usher at the foot of it, armed with his indignation and a birch rod.

"And for three mortal hours he stood there, while I sat up aloft grinning at him," says Mr. Massereene, with (considering his years) a disgraceful appreciation of his past immoral conduct; "and when at last the gardener was induced to mount the tree and drag me ignominiously to the ground, I got such a flogging as made a chair for some time assume the character of a rack."

"And you deserved it, too," says Letitia, with unwonted severity.

"I did, indeed, my dear," John confesses, heartily, "richly. I am glad to see that at last you begin to take a sensible view of the subject. If I deserved a flogging because I once shirked my tasks, what does not Lovat deserve for a long course of such conduct?"

"He is not accused of stealing apples, at all events; and, besides, Lovat is quite different," says Letitia, vaguely. Whereupon John tells her her heart is running away with her head, and that her partiality is so apparent that he must cease from further argument, and goes on with his reading.

Presently, however, he rises, and, crossing the room, stands over her, watching her white shapely fingers as they deftly fill up the holes in the little socks that lie in the basket beside her. She is so far en rapport with him as to know that his manner betokens a desire for confidence.

"Have you anything to say to me, dear?" she asks, looking up and suspending her employment for the time being.

"Letitia," begins he, thoughtfully, not to say solemnly, "it is quite two months since Luttrell first put in an appearance in this house. Now, I don't wish to seem inhospitable,—far be it from me: a thirst for knowledge alone induces me to put the question,—but, do you think he means to reside here permanently?"

"It is certainly very strange," says Letitia, unmoved by his eloquence to even the faintest glimmer of a smile, so deep is her interest in the subject,—"the very oddest thing. If, now, it were a place where a young man could find any amusement, I would say nothing; but here! Do you know, John,"—mysteriously,—"I have my suspicions."

"No!" exclaims Mr. Massereene, betraying the wildest curiosity in voice and gesture,—so wild as to hint at the possibility of its not being genuine. "You don't say so!"

"It has once or twice occurred to me——"

"Yes?"

"I have certainly thought——"

"Letitia,"—with authority,—"don't think, or suspect, or let it occur to you any more: say it."

"Well, then, I think he is in love with Molly."

John breaks into a heavy laugh.

"What it is to be a woman of penetration," says he. "So you have found that out. Now, that is where we men fail. But are you certain? Why do you think it?"

"I am almost convinced of it," Letitia says, with much solemnity. "Last night I happened to be looking out of one of the windows that overhang the garden, and there in the moonlight (it was quite ten o'clock) I saw Molly give him a red rose; and he took it, and gazed at it as though he were going to devour it; and then he kissed it; and after that he kissed Molly's hand! Now, I don't think, John, unless a young man was—you know—eh?"

"I altogether agree with you. Unless a young man was, you know, why, he wouldn't—that's all. I am glad, however, he had the grace to stop at the hand,—that it was not Molly's lips he chose instead."

"My dear John!"

"My darling Letty! have I said anything so very outre? Were you never kissed by a young man?"

"Only by you," returns Mrs. Massereene, laughing apologetically, and blushing a rare delicate pink that would not have disgraced her at eighteen.

"Ah, you may well be excused, considering how you were tempted. It is not every day one meets—— By the bye, Letty, did you cease your eavesdropping at that point?"

"Yes; I did not like to remain longer."

"Then depend upon it, my dear, you did not see the last act in that drama."

"You surely do not think Molly——"

"I seldom trouble to think. I only know Luttrell is an uncommonly good-looking fellow, and that the moon is a white witch."

"He is good-looking," says Letitia, rising and growing troubled; "he is more than that,—he is charming. Oh, John! if our Molly were to fall in love with him, and grow unhappy about it, what would we do? I don't believe he has anything beyond his pay."

"He has something more than that, I know, but not much. The Luttrells have a good deal of spare cash throwing about among them."

"But what of that? And a poor man would be wretched for Molly. Remember what an expensive regiment he is in. Why, I suppose as it is he can hardly keep himself. And how would it be with a wife and a large family?"

"Oh, Letitia! let us have the marriage ceremony first. Why on earth will you saddle the miserable man with a large family so soon? And wouldn't a small one do? Of what use to pile up the agony to such a height?"

"I think of no one but Molly. There is nothing so terrible as a long engagement, and that is what it will come to. Do you remember Sarah Annesley? She grew thinner and thinner day by day, and her complexion became positively yellow when Perceval went away. And her mother said it was suspense preying upon her."

"So they said, my dear; but we all know it was indigestion."

"John,"—austerely,—"what is the exact amount of Mr. Luttrell's income?"

"About six hundred a year, I think."

"As much as that?" Slightly relieved. "And will his father allow him anything more?"

"Unless you insist upon my writing to Sir William, I could not tell you that."

"Six hundred a year is far too little."

"It is almost as much as we have."

"But you are not in the army, and you are not a fashionable young man."

"If you say that again I shall sue for a divorce. But seriously, Letty, perhaps you are exciting yourself about nothing. Who knows but they are indifferent to each other?"

"I fear they are not. And I will not have poor Molly made unhappy."

"Why not 'poor Luttrell'? It is far more likely as I see it."

"I don't want any one to be unhappy. And something must be done."

"Exactly." After a pause, with ill-concealed cowardice: "Will you do it?"

"Do what?"

"That awful 'something' that is to be done."

"Certainly not. It is your duty to—to—find out everything, and ask them both what they mean."

"Then I won't," declares John, throwing out his arms decisively. "I would not be bribed to do it. What! ask a man his intentions! I couldn't bring myself to do such a thing. How could I look him in the face again? They must fight the best battle they can for themselves, like every one else. I won't interfere."

"Very good. I shall speak to Molly. And I really think we ought to go and look them up. I have seen neither of them since breakfast time."

"The rain has ceased. Let us go out by the balcony," says Mr. Massereene, stepping through the open window. "I heard them in the school-room as I passed."

Now, this balcony, as I have told you, runs along all one side of the house, and on it the drawing-room, school-room, and one of the parlor windows open. Thick curtains hang from them and conceal in part the outer world; so that when John and Letty stand before the school-room window to look in they do so without being themselves seen. And this, I regret to say, is what they see:

In the centre of the room a square table, and flying round and round it, with the tail of her white gown twisted over her right arm, is Miss Massereene, with Mr. Luttrell in full chase after her.

"Well, upon my word!" says Mr. Massereene, unable through bewilderment to think of any remark more brilliant.

Round and round goes Molly, round and round follows her pursuer; until Luttrell, finding his prey to be quite as fleet if not fleeter than himself, resorts to a mean expedient, and, catching hold of one side of the table, pushes it, and Molly behind it, slowly but surely into the opposite corner.

There is no hope. Steadily, certainly, she approaches her doom, and with flushed cheeks and eyes gleaming with laughter, makes a vain protest.

"Now I have you," says Luttrell, drawing an elaborate penknife from his pocket, in which all the tools that usually go to adorn a carpenter's shop fight for room. "Prepare for death, or—I give you your choice: I shall either cut your jugular vein or kiss you. Don't hurry. Say which you prefer. It is a matter of indifference to me."

"Cut every vein in my body first," cries Molly, breathless but defiant.

["Letitia," whispers John, "I feel I am going to laugh. What shall I do?"

"Don't," says Letitia, with stern promptitude. "That is what you will do. It is no laughing matter. I hope you are not going to make a jest of it, John."

"But, my dear, supposing I can't help it?" suggests he, mildly. "Our risible faculties are not always under our control."

"On an occasion such as this they should be."

"Letitia," says Mr. Massereene, regarding her with severity, "you are going to laugh yourself; don't deny it."

"No,—no, indeed," protests Letitia, foolishly, considering her handsome face is one broad smile, and that her plump shoulders are visibly shaking.]

"It is mean! it is shameful!" says Molly, from within, seeing no chance of escape. Whichever way she rushes can be only into his arms.

"All that you can say shan't prevent me," decides Luttrell, moving toward her with fell determination in his eye.

"Perhaps a little that I can say may have the desired effect," breaks in Mr. Massereene, advancing into the middle of the room, with Letitia, looking rather nervous, behind him.

Tableau.

There is a sudden, rather undignified, cessation of hostilities on the part of Mr. Luttrell, who beats a hasty retreat to the wall, where he stands as though glad of the support. He bears a sneaky rather than a distinguished appearance, and altogether has the grace to betray a considerable amount of shame.

Molly, dropping her gown, turns a rich crimson, but is, I need hardly say, by far the least upset of the two delinquents. She remains where she is, hedged in by the table, and is conscious of feeling a wild desire to laugh.

Determined to break the silence, which is proving oppressive, she says, demurely: