speak of such vanities--fie now! out upon
you! shall I throw you down my little mirror that you may see that face?
Well! I am a naughty froward child. See there! I am sitting on the stool
of penance, and I ask thee pardon."

"Forgive me also," cried Gerald, springing forward, his heart melting
before the arch look of fondness that beamed down upon him. "Forgive me my
pettish impatience with you, Mildred."

"Forgiveness of injuries is ordained unto us as our first of duties,"
rejoined Mildred with another demure look--which was all the wickeder for
its demureness.

"But why came you not before, my Mildred?" said the lover, with a slight
lingering tone of expostulation; "you know not the bitterness of those
countless minutes of anxiety, and doubt, and eager waiting."

"I could not leave my father," replied Mildred more seriously; "although
he knows and approves our attachment; he would have chid me had he been
aware that I come to have speech of you from my window; and as it is, I
have done wrong to come. Besides, he was weary, and bade me read to him,
and I sat by his side, and read to him the Bible, until, in the midst of
an exhortation to watch and pray, I heard a sound that he himself might
have called an uplifting of the horn of Sion, and behold he was snoring in
his chair; and then, in the naughtiness of my heart, I stole from his
presence to come to my room--and--and--tend my flowers," she added with an
arch smile.

"You thought of me then, and came, though late, to see me?" said Gerald
eagerly.

"You? Did I not say my flowers, Master Gerald?" asked Mildred still
laughing.

"Oh! mock me no longer, cruel girl! You know not all I have suffered
during this tedious watch--all the doubts and fears with which my poor
mind has been tortured. Did you know, you would console, not mock me, and
one word would console all. Tell me you love me still."

"One word, you say--what shall it be?" said Mildred, raising her eyebrows
as if to seek the word; and then, looking down upon him kindly, she added,
"Ever."

"And you love none but me? you have no thought for any other?" continued
the lover with an evident spice of jealousy still lurking in his mind.

"What! two words now?" said the laughing girl. "Are all lovers such arrant
beggars? give them a penny and they ask a groat. Well! well! but one
other, and that shall be the last. None"--and as Mildred spoke, she bent
herself over the balcony to smile on Gerald, and reste