“Then I am old Blaize’s niece.”  She tripped him a soft curtsey.

The magnetized youth gazed at her.  By what magic was it that this divine sweet creature could be allied with that old churl!

“Then what—­what is your name?” said his mouth, while his eyes added, “O wonderful creature!  How came you to enrich the earth?”

“Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?” she peered at him from a side-bend of the flapping brim.

“The Desboroughs of Dorset?” A light broke in on him.  “And have you grown to this?  That little girl I saw there!”

He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the vision.  She could no more laugh off the piercing fervour of his eyes.  Her volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful look, and now neither voice was high, and they were mutually constrained.

“You see,” she murmured, “we are old acquaintances.”

Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned, “You are very beautiful!”

The words slipped out.  Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.  Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and, like an instrument that is touched and answers to the touch, he spoke.

Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible directness; but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her lips.  She turned away from them, her bosom a little rebellious.  Praise so passionately spoken, and by one who has been a damsel’s first dream, dreamed of nightly many long nights, and clothed in the virgin silver of her thoughts in bud, praise from him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it would.  She quickened her steps.

“I have offended you!” said a mortally wounded voice across her shoulder.

That he should think so were too dreadful.

“Oh no, no! you would never offend me.”  She gave him her whole sweet face.

“Then why—­why do you leave me?”

“Because,” she hesitated, “I must go.”

“No.  You must not go.  Why must you go?  Do not go.”

“Indeed I must,” she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad brim of her hat; and, interpreting a pause he made for his assent to her rational resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand out, and said, “Good-bye,” as if it were a natural thing to say.

The hand was pure white—­white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a Maynight.  It was the hand whose shadow, cast before, he had last night bent his head reverentially above, and kissed—­resigning himself thereupon over to execution for payment of the penalty of such daring—­by such bliss well rewarded.

He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.

“Good-bye,” she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the same time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of adieu.  It was a signal for his to close firmly upon hers.

“You will not go?”

“Pray, let me,” she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrinkles.