and duel no more?"

"Yes."

She yielded her hand now, and her eyes were full of happiness, yet she
added, wistfully,--

"And the betrothed, your cousin, Minna,--is she, in truth, not dear to
you?"

"Very dear, but less so than another; for I could not learn of her in
years what I learned in a day when I met you. Helen, this was begun in
jest,--it ends in solemn earnest, for I love my liberty, and I have
lost it, utterly and forever. Yet I am glad; look in my face and tell
me you believe it."

He spoke now as seriously as fervently, and with no shadow on her own,
Helen brushed back the blond hair and looked into her lover's face.
Truth, tenderness, power, and candor were written there in characters
that could not lie; and with her heart upon her lips, she answered, as
he drew her close,--

"I do believe, do love you, Sigismund!" Meanwhile another scene was
passing in the garden. Sidney, presuming upon his cousinship, took
possession of Amy, bidding her "strike but hear him." Of course she
listened with the usual accompaniment of tears and smiles, reproaches
and exclamations, varied by cruel exultations and coquettish commands
to go away and never dare approach her again.

"_Ma drogha_, listen and be appeased. Years ago you and I played
together as babies, and our fond mammas vowed we should one day mate.
When I was a youth of fourteen and you a mite of seven I went away to
India with my father, and at our parting promised to come back and
marry you. Being in a fret because you couldn't go also, you haughtily
declined the honor, and when I offered a farewell kiss, struck me with
this very little hand. Do you remember it?"

"Not I. Too young for such nonsense."

"I do, and I also remember that in my boyish way I resolved to keep my
word sooner or later, and I've done it."

"We shall see, sir," cried Amy, strongly tempted to repeat her part of
the childish scene as well as her cousin, but her hand was not free,
and he got the kiss without the blow.

"For eleven years we never met. You forgot me, and 'Cousin Sidney'
remained an empty name. I was in India till four years ago; since then
I've been flying about Germany and fighting in Poland, where I nearly
got my quietus."

"My dear boy, were you wounded?"

"Bless you, yes; and very proud of it I am. I'll show you my scars
some day; but never mind that now. A while ago I went to England,
seized with a sudden desire to find my wife."

"I admire your patience