see them. I can see a great deal more
than you think, and I know that hateful girl has made up her mind to
marry you as soon as ever she can."

"That will be never."

"Not if you go on bringing her roses and things."

"What harm can a simple rose do?"

"If you are going to look at it in that light, I shall say no more. But
in a very little time you will find she has married you, and _then_
where will you be?"

Her jealousy is too childishly open to be misunderstood. Mr. Desmond's
spirits are rising with marvellous rapidity; indeed, for the past two
minutes he feels as if he is treading on air.

"As you won't have me, I don't much care _where_ I shall be," he says
with the mean hope of reducing her to submission by a threat. In this
hope he is doomed to be disappointed, as she meets his base insinuation
with an unlowered front.

"Very good, _go_ and marry her," she says, calmly, as if church, parson,
and Miss Fitzgerald are all waiting for him, in anxious expectation,
round the corner.

"No, I shan't," says Desmond, changing his tactics without a blush.
"Catch me at it! As you persist in refusing me, I shall never marry, but
remain a bachelor forever, for your sweet sake."

"Then say you will not bring those roses to-morrow. Or, better still,
say you will bring them, and"--all women, even the best are cruel--"give
them to me _before_ her."

"My darling! what an unreasonable thing to ask me!"

"Oh! I daresay! when people don't _love_ people they always think
everything they do unreasonable."

This rather involved sentence seems to cut Mr. Desmond to the heart.

"Of course, if you say that, I must do it," he says.

"Don't do it on my account," with a wilful air.

"No, on my own, of course."

"Well, remember I don't ask you to do it," with the most disgraceful
ingratitude. "Do as you wish about it."

"Your wishes are mine," he says, tenderly. "I have had no divided
existence since that first day I saw you,--how long ago it seems
now----"

"Very long. Only a few weeks in reality, but it seems to myself that I
have known and--liked you all my life."

"Yet that day when I saw you on the hay-cart is hardly two months old,"
says Desmond, dreamily.

As a breath of half-forgotten perfume, or a long-lost chord fresh
sounded, brings back the memories of a lifetime, so does this chance
remark of his now recall to her a scene almost gone out of mind, yet
still fraught with recollections terrible to her self-