d brings the tender passionate love-song to him, and
repeats it in his ear as it hurries onward: "My dove, my dear." How
exactly the words suit her! he says them over and over again to
himself, almost losing the rest of the music which she is still
breathing forth to the evening air.

"My life! my fate!" Is she his life,--his fate? The idea makes him
tremble. Has he set his whole heart upon a woman who perhaps can never
give him hers in return? The depth, the intensity of the passion with
which he repeats the words of her song astonishes and perplexes him
vaguely. Is she indeed his fate?

He is quite close to her now; and she, turning round to him her lovely
flower-like face, starts perceptibly, and, springing to her feet,
confronts him with a little frown, and a sudden deepening of color
that spreads from chin to brow.

At this moment he knows the whole truth. Never has she appeared so
desirable in his eyes. Life with her means happiness more than falls
to the lot of most; life without her, an interminable blank.

"Love lights upon the hearts, and straight we feel
More worlds of wealth gleam in an upturned eye
Than in the rich heart or the miser sea."

"I thought I told you not to come," says Miss Broughton, still
frowning.

"I am sure you did not," contradicts he, eagerly; "you said, rather
unkindly, I must confess,--but still you said it,--'Catch me if you
can.' That was a command. I have obeyed it. And I have caught you."

"You knew I was not speaking literally," says Miss Broughton, with
some wrath. "The idea of your supposing I really meant you to catch
me! You couldn't have thought it."

"Well, what was I to think? You certainly said it. So I came. I
believed"--humbly--"it was the best thing to do."

"Yes; and you found me sitting--as--I was, and singing at the top of
my voice. How I dislike people"--says Miss Broughton, with fine
disgust--"who steal upon other people unawares!"

"I didn't steal; I regularly trampled"--protests Branscombe, justly
indignant--"right over the moss and ferns and the other things, as
hard as ever I could. If bluebells won't crackle like dead leaves it
isn't my fault, is it? _I_ hadn't the ordering of them!"

"Oh, yes, it is, every bit your fault," persists she, wilfully,
biting, with enchanting grace largely tinctured with viciousness, the
blade of grass she is holding.

Silence, of the most eloquent, that lasts for a full minute, even
until the unoffending grass