t blaze with a dozen times the
intensity it would have exhibited if left alone. Never were conditions
more favourable for developing a girl's first passing fancy for a
handsome boyish face--a fancy rooted in inexperience and nourished by
seclusion--into a wild unreflecting passion fervid enough for anything.
All the elements of such a development were there, the chief one being
hopelessness--a necessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of
feelings united under the name of loving to distraction.

'We would tell papa soon, would we not?' she inquired timidly. 'Nobody
else need know. He would then be convinced that hearts cannot be played
with; love encouraged be ready to grow, love discouraged be ready to
die, at a moment's notice. Stephen, do you not think that if marriages
against a parent's consent are ever justifiable, they are when young
people have been favoured up to a point, as we have, and then have had
that favour suddenly withdrawn?'

'Yes. It is not as if we had from the beginning acted in opposition to
your papa's wishes. Only think, Elfie, how pleasant he was towards me
but six hours ago! He liked me, praised me, never objected to my being
alone with you.'

'I believe he MUST like you now,' she cried. 'And if he found that you
irremediably belonged to me, he would own it and help you. 'O Stephen,
Stephen,' she burst out again, as the remembrance of his packing came
afresh to her mind, 'I cannot bear your going away like this! It is
too dreadful. All I have been expecting miserably killed within me like
this!'

Stephen flushed hot with impulse. 'I will not be a doubt to you--thought
of you shall not be a misery to me!' he said. 'We will be wife and
husband before we part for long!'

She hid her face on his shoulder. 'Anything to make SURE!' she
whispered.

'I did not like to propose it immediately,' continued Stephen. 'It
seemed to me--it seems to me now--like trying to catch you--a girl
better in the world than I.'

'Not that, indeed! And am I better in worldly station? What's the use of
have beens? We may have been something once; we are nothing now.'

Then they whispered long and earnestly together; Stephen hesitatingly
proposing this and that plan, Elfride modifying them, with quick
breathings, and hectic flush, and unnaturally bright eyes. It was two
o'clock before an arrangement was finally concluded.

She then told him to leave her, giving him his light to go up to his own
room. The