Stephen forgot himself, forgot the fact that Mercy was comparatively a stranger, forgot every thing, except the one intense consciousness of this sweet woman-face looking up into his.  Bending towards her, he said suddenly,—­

“Mrs. Philbrick, your face is the very loveliest face I have ever seen in my life.  Do not be angry with me.  Oh, do not!” he continued, seeing the color deepen in Mercy’s cheeks, and a stern expression gathering in her eyes, as she looked steadily at him with unutterable surprise.  “Do not be angry with me.  I could not help saying it; but I do not say it as men generally say such things.  I am not like other men:  I have lived alone all my life with my mother.  You need not mind my saying your face is lovely, any more than my saying that the ferns on the walls are lovely.”

If Stephen had known Mercy from her childhood, he could not have framed his words more wisely.  Every fibre of her artistic nature recognized the possibility of a subtle truth in what he said, and his calm, dreamy tone and look heightened this impression.  Moreover, as Stephen’s soul had been during all the past four weeks slowly growing into the feeling which made it inevitable that he should say these words on first looking closely and intimately into Mercy’s face, so had her soul been slowly growing into the feeling which made it seem not really foreign or unnatural to her that he should say them.

She answered him with hesitating syllables, quite unlike her usual fluent speech.

“I think you must mean what you say, Mr. White; and you do not say it as other men have said it.  But will you please to remember not to say it again?  We cannot be friends, if you do.”

“Never again, Mrs. Philbrick?” he said,—­he could almost have said “Mercy,”—­and looked at her with a gaze of whose intentness he was hardly aware.

Mercy felt a strange terror of this man; a few minutes ago a stranger, now already asking at her hands she hardly knew what, and compelling her in spite of herself.  But she replied very quietly, with a slight smile,—­

“Never, Mr. White.  Now talk of something else, please.  Your mother seemed very much pleased with the ferns I carried her to-day.  Did she love the woods, when she was well?”

“I do not know.  I never heard her say,” answered Stephen, absently, still gazing into Mercy’s face.

“But you would have known, surely, if she had cared for them,” said Mercy, laughing; for she perceived that Stephen had spoken at random.

“Oh, yes, certainly,—­certainly.  I should have known,” said Stephen, still with a preoccupied air, and rising to go.  “I thank you for letting me come into this beautiful room with you.  I shall always think of your face framed in evergreens, and with flickering firelight on it.”

“You are not going away, are you, Mr. White?” asked Mercy, mischievously.

“Oh, no, certainly not.  I never go away.  How could I go away?  Why did you ask?”