public-house behind till she came to the farther end of the village.
Kenelm walked beside her, muttering to himself: and though Jessie caught
his words, happily she did not understand; for they repeated one of
those bitter reproaches on her sex as the main cause of all strife,
bloodshed, and mischief in general, with which the classic authors
abound. His spleen soothed by that recourse to the lessons of the
ancients, Kenelm turned at last to his silent companion, and said kindly
but gravely,--

"Mr. Bowles has given me his promise, and it is fair that I should now
ask a promise from you. It is this: just consider how easily a girl so
pretty as you can be the cause of a man's death. Had Bowles struck me
where I struck him I should have been past the help of a surgeon."

"Oh!" groaned Jessie, shuddering, and covering her face with both hands.

"And, putting aside that danger, consider that a man may be hit mortally
on the heart as well as on the head, and that a woman has much to answer
for who, no matter what her excuse, forgets what misery and what guilt
can be inflicted by a word from her lip and a glance from her eye.
Consider this, and promise that, whether you marry Will Somers or not,
you will never again give a man fair cause to think you can like him
unless your own heart tells you that you can. Will you promise that?"

"I will, indeed,--indeed." Poor Jessie's voice died in sobs.

"There, my child, I don't ask you not to cry, because I know how much
women like crying; and in this instance it does you a great deal
of good. But we are just at the end of the village; which is Will's
cottage?"

Jessie lifted her head, and pointed to a solitary, small thatched
cottage.

"I would ask you to come in and introduce me; but that might look too
much like crowing over poor Tom Bowles. So good-night to you, Jessie,
and forgive me for preaching."

CHAPTER XIII.

KENELM knocked at the cottage door; a voice said faintly, "Come in."

He stooped his head, and stepped over the threshold.

Since his encounter with Tom Bowles his sympathies had gone with that
unfortunate lover: it is natural to like a man after you have beaten
him; and he was by no means predisposed to favour Jessie's preference
for a sickly cripple.

Yet, when two bright, soft, dark eyes, and a pale intellectual
countenance, with that nameless aspect of refinement which delicate
health so often gives, especially to the young, greeted his quiet ga