first sight of her was
thus excruciatingly sad, like a glimpse of a world from which all light,
comfort, and society were on the point of vanishing. And the next
moment, when she had turned her face to him and the quick smile had
enlightened it, the whole face of nature smiled upon him in her smile of
welcome. Archie's slow pace was quickened; his legs hasted to her though
his heart was hanging back. The girl, upon her side, drew herself
together slowly and stood up, expectant; she was all languor, her face
was gone white; her arms ached for him, her soul was on tip-toes. But he
deceived her, pausing a few steps away, not less white than herself, and
holding up his hand with a gesture of denial.

"No, Christina, not to-day," he said. "To-day I have to talk to you
seriously. Sit ye down, please, there where you were. Please!" he
repeated.

The revulsion of feeling in Christina's heart was violent. To have
longed and waited these weary hours for him, rehearsing her
endearments--to have seen him at last come--to have been ready there,
breathless, wholly passive, his to do what he would with--and suddenly
to have found herself confronted with a grey-faced, harsh
schoolmaster--it was too rude a shock. She could have wept, but pride
withheld her. She sat down on the stone, from which she had arisen, part
with the instinct of obedience, part as though she had been thrust
there. What was this? Why was she rejected? Had she ceased to please?
She stood here offering her wares, and he would none of them! And yet
they were all his! His to take and keep, not his to refuse though! In
her quick petulant nature, a moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted love
and wounded vanity wrought. The schoolmaster that there is in all men,
to the despair of all girls and most women, was now completely in
possession of Archie. He had passed a night of sermons, a day of
reflection; he had come wound up to do his duty; and the set mouth,
which in him only betrayed the effort of his will, to her seemed the
expression of an averted heart. It was the same with his constrained
voice and embarrassed utterance; and if so--if it was all over--the pang
of the thought took away from her the power of thinking.

He stood before her some way off. "Kirstie, there's been too much of
this. We've seen too much of each other." She looked up quickly and her
eyes contracted. "There's no good ever comes of these secret meetings.
They're not frank, not honest truly, an