Though Folly be near kin to Vice, she does not acknowledge the relationship, and, to do Harry Trevethick justice, she would never have made a midnight assignation with Richard in the Fairies’ Bower.  She was more alarmed and shocked at the too literal fulfillment of her wish than pleased to see him there.  She shed tears for very shame.  Whatever reserve she had hitherto maintained, with respect to her affection for him, had now, she perceived, been swept away by her own act.  The scene to which he had just been an unsuspected witness was more than equivalent to a mere declaration of love:  it was a leap-year offer of her hand and heart.  She had no strong-hold of Duty left to which to betake herself, nor even a halting-place, such as coy maidens love to linger at a little before they murmur, “I am yours.”

There was nothing left her but revilings.  She poured upon him a torrent of contumely, reproaching him for his baseness, his cowardice, his treachery in tracking her hither, like a spy, to overhear a confession that should have been sacred with him of all men.  Whatever that confession might have been—­and, to say truth, so utterly possessed had she been by her passionate hopes, her loving yearnings, that she knew not what she had merely felt, what uttered aloud—­she now retracted it; she had no tenderness for eaves-droppers, for deceivers, for—­she did not know what she was saying—­for wicked young men.  Above all things it seemed necessary to be in a passion; to be as irritated and bitter against him as possible.  The copiousness of her vocabulary of abuse surprised herself, and she did not shrink from tautology.  She only stopped at last for want of breath, and even then, as though she knew how dangerous was silence, she bemoaned herself with sobs and sighs.

Then Richard, all tenderness and submission, explained his presence there; showed how little he was to blame in the matter, and, indeed, how there was neither blame nor shame to be attached to either of them; spoke of his late interview with her father, gilding it with brightest hopes, and cited the marvelous attributes of the Wishing-Well itself in support of his position.  He felt himself already her affianced husband; the question of their union had become only one of time.  She was listening to him now, and had suffered him to kiss her tears away, when suddenly she started from his embrace with a muffled cry of terror.  Some movement of beast or bird in the copse had made a rustling in the underwood, but her fears gave it a human shape.  What if Sol should have followed them thither, as Richard had followed her! What if her father should have heard her leave his roof, as Richard had, or should miss her from it—­and—­oh shame!—­miss him! “Home! home!” she cried.  “Let me go home.”  And she looked so wild with fright that he durst not hinder her.  Hardly could he keep pace with her along the winding path, with such frantic speed she ran.  At the stile she forbade him to accompany her farther.