e lies upon its breast.

Even as she looks the image fades--the "fleecy cloud" (jealous, perhaps,
of the beauty of the divine Artemis, and of Portia's open admiration of
her) has floated over her again, and driven her, for a little moment,
into positive obscurity.

The path grows dark, the lake loses its color. Portia, with a sigh,
moves on, confessing to herself the mutability of all things, and
pushing aside some low-lying branches of a heavily-scented shrub, finds
herself face to face with a tall young man, who, apparently, is as lost
in wonder at her appearance as she is at his!

She starts, perceptibly, and, only half-suppressing a faint exclamation
of fear, shrinks backwards.

"I beg your pardon," says the stranger, hastily. "I am afraid I have
frightened you. But, really, it was all the fault of the moon."

His voice is reassuring, and Portia, drawing her breath more freely,
feels just a little ashamed of her momentary terror.

"I am not frightened now," she says, with an upward glance, trying to
read, through the darkness, the face of him she addresses. The clouds
are scurrying swiftly across the sky, and now the moon shines forth
again triumphant, and all things grow clearer. She can see that he is
tall, dark, handsome, with a strange expression round his mouth that is
surely more acquired than natural, as it does not suit his other
features at all, and may be termed hard and reckless, and almost
defiant. His jaw is exquisitely turned. In his eyes is a settled
melancholy--altogether his face betrays strong emotions, severely
repressed, and is half-morbid and wholly sad, and, when all is said,
more attractive than forbidding.

Portia, gazing at him with interest, tells herself that years of mental
suffering could alone have produced the hard lines round the lips and
the weariness in the eyes. She has no time for further speculation,
however, and goes on quickly: "It was more than foolish of me; but I
quite forgot, I"--with some uncertainty--"should have remembered."

"What do you forget? and what should you have remembered?"

"I forgot that burglars do not, as a rule, I suppose, go about in
evening clothes; and I should have remembered"--with a smile--"that
there was yet another cousin to whom I had not been introduced."

"Yes; I am Fabian Blount," he says indifferently. He does not return her
smile. Almost he gives her the impression that at this moment he would
gladly have substituted another name f