d n't have pleaded harder
for my life, if it was at stake; but she stopped me short, and,
squeezing my hand between both of hers, said: 'No, Dan, this cannot be,
and you are too generous to ask me why.' But I was not! I pressed her
all the more; and at last--not without seeing a tear in her eye, too--I
got at her secret, and heard her say your name. I swore by every saint
we could either of us remember, never to tell this to man or mortal
living; and I suppose, in strict fact, I ought n't to do so now; but, of
course, it 's the same thing as if you were dead, and you, I well know,
will never breathe it again."

"Never!" said my father, and sat with his head on his hand, unable to
utter a word more.

"Poor Kitty!" said Dan, with a heavy sigh, while he balanced his spoon
on the edge of his teacup. "I half suspect she is the only one in the
world that you ever seriously wronged, and yet she is the very first to
uphold you."

"But you are unjust, Dan,--most unjust," cried my father, warmly. "There
was a kind of flirtation between us--I don't deny it,--but nothing more
than is always going forward in this free-and-easy land of ours, where
people play with their feelings as they do with their fortunes, and are
quite astonished to discover, some fine morning, that they have fairly
run through both one and the other. I liked her, and she perhaps liked
me, somewhat better than any one else that she met as often. We got
to become very intimate; to feel that in the disposal of our leisure
hours--which meant the livelong day--we were excessively necessary to
each other; in fact, that if our minds were not quite alike, our tastes
were. Of course, before one gets that far, one's friends, as they call
themselves, have gone far beyond it. There's no need of wearying you
with detail. Somebody, I 'm sure I forget who it was, now took occasion
to tell me that I was behaving ill to Kitty; that unless I really
intended seriously,--that's the paraphrase for marriage,--my attentions
were calculated to do her injury. Ay, by Jove! your match-making
moralists talk of a woman as they would of a horse, and treat a broken
flirtation as if it were a breach of warranty. I was, I own it, not a
little annoyed at the unnecessary degree of interest my friends insisted
on taking in my welfare; but I was not fool enough to go to war with the
world single-handed, so I seemed to accept the counsel, and went my way.
That same day, I rode out with Kitty. Th