appeared to have arisen between
Evie and myself. I told myself that the idea was foolish, and yet I knew
that it was not so. Mind, I had not the slightest doubt as to the
strength of Evie's love for me. She expressed it clearly, yet there was
something drawing us apart, and I began to be afraid.

Towards the middle of June the tension became so great, that I could see
the time had arrived when it would be necessary to do something; and,
one night, I determined to mention the matter. Accordingly, after
dinner, I persuaded Evie to come into the garden, with the intention to
speak firmly in my mind. There, however, in the faint light of the
summer night, with the sweet scent of the early roses filling the air, I
forgot everything in the blissfulness of my lot. We had paced our
favourite walk once in silence--my heart was too full of delight for
speech--when, as we retraced our steps, to my surprise, Evie burst
suddenly into passionate tears. Some minutes elapsed before I could calm
her, and when I managed at last to do so, it needed all my powers of
persuasion to get her to confide in me the cause of her outburst. At
first she said it was nothing but the hysteria of happiness. Then she
asked me, with a fierce clutch on my arm, if I should think her
unmaidenly if she asked that our wedding-day should be hastened. We had
fixed it for September, so I at once suggested July.

Her mood changed at once. She said she was not feeling well, and that I
must not listen to her. But being now thoroughly alarmed at her
obviously nervous condition, I questioned her until I elicited from her
that all her old dread of Mannering had returned, and with double
intensity, in that it was accompanied by a presentiment of disaster to
myself.

"Jim," she said, looking up into my face with eyes which glowed in the
faint light like stars, "I shall not feel sure of you until I am with
you always. I want to be near you to look after you. Every moment you
are absent from my side, I am imagining all sorts of horrible things
happening to you. And it is worse to bear, because, it seems to me, that
I am the cause of it all."

I strove to laugh away her fears, but, say what I would, I could not
dispel the thought in her mind that some disaster threatened our love.
Probing her mind for the foundation of her belief, I was not surprised
to find that Mannering had something to do with it.

I did my best to make her mind easy, while determining that I would