why cannot I be _more_ to you? Why am I to be denied a chance of
forwarding the cause in which all my hopes are centred? Monica, say you
will meet me somewhere--_soon_."

"How can I?" she says, tremulously. Her voice is full of tears. She is
altogether different from the coquettish, provoking child of last night.
"You forget all I have just now said."

"At least tell me," says he, sadly, "that if you could you would."

There is a pathetic ring in his tone, and tears rise to her eyes. Can
anything be so hopeless as this love-affair of hers?

"Yes, I would," she says, almost desperately.

"Oh, darling--_darling_!" says the young man with passion. He holds her
hands closely, and looks into her troubled eyes, and wishes he might
dare take her into his arms and, pressing her to his heart, ask her to
repeat her words again. But there is something in the calm purity of her
beautiful face that repels vehemence of any sort; and as yet--although
the dawn is near--her love has not declared itself to her own soul in
all its strength.

"I have at least one consolation," he says, at last, calling to mind the
quietude that surrounds Moyne and its inhabitants, and the withdrawal
from society that has obtained there for many years. "As you are not
allowed to see me,--except on such rare occasions as the present when
the Fates are kind,--you cannot at least see _any one else_,--often,
that is."

"Meaning?----"

"Ryde."

She laughs a little, and then colors.

"Aunt Priscilla has asked him to come to Moyne next Friday," she says,
looking at the ground: "she is giving an At Home on that day, for him
and Captain Cobbett. She says she feels it is a duty to her queen to
show some attention to her servants."

In her tone, as she says this, there is a spice of that mischief that is
never very far from any pretty woman.

"He is to be invited to Moyne,--to spend an entire day with you!" says
Desmond, thunderstruck by this last piece of news.

"Oh, no! only part of it," says Monica, meekly.

"It is just as bad. It is disgraceful! Your aunts are purposely
encouraging _him_ to keep you away from me. Oh, _why_," wretchedly,
"should this unlucky quarrel have arisen between our house and yours?"

"Well, that's your fault," says Monica.

"Mine?"

"Your uncle's, then. It is all the same," unjustly.

"I really can't see _that_," says Mr. Desmond, very righteously
aggrieved; "that is visiting the sins of the uncles upon the nephews