is confession seemed
futile. Her eyes, suggestive of tender possibilities, expressed now
but coldness and obduracy. In a revulsion of feeling he forgot the
distance separating the buskined from the fashionable world; the
tragic scatterlings from the conventions of Vanity Fair! He forgot all
save that she was to him now the one unparagoned entirety, overriding
other memories.

"Will not a life of devotion atone for this day, Constance?" he cried.
"Do you know how far-reaching are these lands? All the afternoon you
drove through them, and they extend as wide in the other direction.
These--my name--are yours!"

A shade of color swept over her brow.

"Answer me," he urged.

"Drive back and I will answer you."

"Drive back and you will laugh at me," he retorted, moodily. "You
would make a woman's bargain with me."

"Is yours a man's with me?" Contemptuously.

"What more can I do?"

"Undo what you have done. Take me back!"

"I would cut a nice figure doing that! No; you shall stay here."

He spoke angrily; her disdain at his proposal not only injured his
pride but awoke his animosity. On the other hand, his words
demonstrated she had not improved her own position. If he meant to
keep her there he could do so, and opposition made him only more
obstinate, more determined to press his advantage. Had she been more
politic--Juliana off the stage as well as on--she, whose artifice was
glossed by artlessness--

Her lashes drooped; her attitude became less aggressive; her eyes,
from beneath their dark curtains, rested on him for a moment. What it
was in that glance so effective is not susceptible to analysis. Was it
the appeal that awakened the quixotic sense of honor; the helplessness
arousing compassion; the irresistible quality of a brimming eye so
fatal to masculine calculation and positiveness? Whatever it was, it
dispelled the contraction on the land baron's face, and--despite his
threats, vows!--he was swayed by a look.

"Forgive me," he said, tenderly.

"You will drive back?"

"Yes; I will win you in your own way, fairly and honestly! I will take
you back, though the whole country laughs at me. Win or lose, back we
go, for--I love you!" And impetuously he threw his arm around her
waist.

Simulation could not stand the test; it was no longer acting, but
reality; she had set herself to a role she could not perform. Hating
him for that free touch, she forcibly extricated herself with an
exclamation and an e