showed him plainly enough what he had long been afraid of, that he was really in love with her; and that, as he put it, if she did not make a fool of herself about him, he was but too likely to end in making a fool of himself about her.  However, he must speak, to support his own character as a man of the world;—­it would never do to knock under to a country girl in this way;—­she might go and boast of it all over the town;—­beside, foiled or not, he would not give in without trying her mettle somewhat further.

“Miss Harvey, will you forgive me?”

“I have forgiven you.”

“Will you forget?”

“If I can!” she said, with a marked expression, which signified (though, of course, she did not mean Tom to understand it), “some of what is past is too precious, and some too painful, to forget.”

“I do not ask you to forget all which has passed!”

“I am afraid that there is nothing which would be any credit to you, sir, to have remembered.”

“Credit or none,” said Tom, unabashed, “do not forget one word that I said.”

She looked hastily and sidelong round,—­“That I am in your power?”

“No! curse it!  I wish I had bitten out my tongue before I had said that.  No! that I am in your power, Miss Harvey.”

“Sir!  I never heard you say that; and if you had, the sooner anything so untrue is forgotten the better.”

“I said that I loved you, Grace; and if that does not mean that—­”

“Sir!  Mr. Thurnall!  I cannot, I will not hear!  You only insult me, sir, by speaking thus, when you know that—­that you consider me—­a thief!” and the poor girl burst into tears again.

“I do not!  I do not;” cried Tom, growing really earnest at the sight of her sorrow, “Did I not begin this unhappy talk by begging your pardon for ever having let such a thought cross my mind?”

“But you do! you do! you told me as much at my own door; and I have seen it ever since, till I have almost gone mad under it!”

“I will swear to you by all that is sacred that I do not!  Oh, Grace, the first moment I saw you my heart told me that it was impossible; and now, this afternoon, as I listened to you with that sick girl, I felt a wretch for ever having—­Grace, I tell you, you made me feel, for the moment, a better man than I ever felt in my life before.  A poor return I have made for that, truly!”

Grace looked up in his face gasping.

“Oh, say that! say that again.  Oh, good Lord, merciful Lord, at last!  Oh, if you knew what it was to have even one weight lifted off, among all my heavy burdens, and that weight the hardest to bear.  God forgive me that it should have been so!  Oh, I can breathe freely now again, that I know I am not suspected by you.”

“By you?” Tom could not but see what, after all, no human being can conceal, that Grace cared for him.  And the devil came and tempted him once more:  but this time it was in vain.  Tom’s better angel had returned; Grace’s tender guilelessness, which would with too many men only have marked her out as the easier prey, was to him as a sacred shield before her innocence.  So noble, so enthusiastic, so pure!  He could not play the villain with that woman.