“Yes,” he answered, “he’s in there.  Walk right in;” and in the midst of his trouble of spirit he could hardly help chuckling at his own cleverness as he walked, in his amazement, back to the conservatory.

While she was in the house, Maud had confined herself to the subject of the vacancy in the library.  She rushed at it, as a hunter at a hedge, to get away from the other matter which had tormented her for a week.  When she found herself alone with Farnham she saw that it would be “horrid” to say what she had so long been rehearsing.  “Now I can get that place, if you will help me.  No earthly soul knows anything about it, and Minnie said she would give me a good chance before she let it out.”

Farnham tried to show her the difficulties in the way.  He was led by her eagerness into a more detailed account of his differences with the rest of the board than he had ever given to any one, a fuller narrative than was perhaps consistent with entire prudence.  Whenever he paused, she would insist with a woman’s disconcerting directness: 

“But they don’t know anything about it this time—­they can’t combine on anybody.  You can certainly get one of them.”

Farnham still argued against her sanguine hopes, till he at last affected her own spirits, and she grew silent and despondent.  As she rose to go, he also took his hat to return to the garden, where he had left Sleeny, and they walked over the lawn together.  As they approached the rose-house, she thought of her former visit and asked to repeat it.  The warm breath of the flowers saluted her as she crossed the threshold, bringing so vivid a reminiscence of the enchantment of that other day, that there came with it a sudden and poignant desire to try there, in that bewitched atmosphere, the desperate experiment which would decide her fate.  There was no longer any struggle in her mind.  She could not, for her life, have kept silent now.  She walked slowly beside him to the place where the pots of roses stood ranged on their frames, filling the air with dense fragrance.  Her hands were icy cold and quick flushes passed through her, while her face reddened and paled like a horizon smitten by heat-lightning in a sultry night of summer.  She looked at the moist brick pavement at her feet, her eyelids seemed too heavy to lift, and the long lashes nearly touched her cheeks.

“What sort will you have?” said Farnham, reaching for the gardener’s shears.

“Never mind the roses,” she said, in a dry voice which she hardly recognized as her own.  “I have something to say to you.”

He turned and looked at her with surprise.  She raised her eyes to his with a great effort, and then, blushing fiery red, she said, in a clear, low voice, “I love you.”

Like many another daughter and son of Eve, she was startled at the effect of these momentous words upon herself.  Of all forms of speech these three words are the most powerful, the most wonderworking upon the being who utters them.  It was the first time they had ever passed her lips, and they exalted and inebriated her.  She was suddenly set free from the bashful constraint which had held her, and with a leaping pulse and free tongue she poured out her heart to the astonished and scandalized young man.