hat will prevent our having time to quarrel and part."

"Do you mean to tell me," indignantly, "you have made up your mind never
to kiss me until we are married?"

"Until the morning _of_ our marriage," corrects she.

"You might as well say _never_!" exclaims Gower, very justly incensed.

"I will, if you like," retorts she, with the utmost _bonhommie_.

"It is getting too cold for you to stay out any longer," says Stephen,
with great dignity; "come, let us return to the house."

CHAPTER XXI.

"'Tis impossible to love and be wise."

THEY return. The early Winter night has fallen, and in the smaller
drawing-room the curtains are already drawn, and though no lamps are
lit, a sweet, chattering, gossiping fire sheds a radiance round that
betrays all things to the view.

As Dulce enters the room everyone says, "Well, Dulce," in the
pleasantest way possible, and makes way for her, but Miss Blount goes
into the shade and sits there in a singularly silent fashion.

Sir Mark, noting her mood, feels within him a lazy desire to go to her
and break the unusual taciturnity that surrounds her.

"Why so mute, fair maid?" he asks, dropping into a chair near hers.

"Am I mute?" she asks in her turn, thereby betraying the fact that she
has been very far from them in her inmost thoughts.

"Rather," says Sir Mark; "would you think me rude if I asked the subject
of your waking dreams?"

"No; I was merely thinking what an unsatisfactory place this world is."
She says this slowly, turning her large eyes somewhat wistfully on his.
If she likes any one on earth honestly it is Mark Gore.

"What a morbid speech," returns he. "Do you want a footstool, or a cup
of tea, or what? Evidently something has made the whole world gray to
you. And I can't even agree with you, I think this present world an
uncommonly good old place, all things considered. Rough on us now and
then, but quite passible."

"You are happy," she says.

"And you?"--he lets his keen eyes seek hers--"of what can you complain?
You seem one of fortune's favorites. Have you not got as your most
devoted slave the man of your heart?"

"I suppose so." There is a thorough lack of enthusiasm in her tone, that
irritates him. He puts the end of his mustache into his mouth and chews
it slowly, a certain sign that he is both grieved and annoyed. Then he
changes his glass from his right eye to his left, after all of which he
feels better for the moment.

"A