aintest movement. Now he
took it in his, and pressed it softly. She frowned, and made a slight,
repellant gesture.

"Sylvie?" with a lingering intonation that was hardly inquiry.

"Well!" roused out of her quiet into a momentary petulance.

"Sylvie, I love you. Will you be my wife?"

In his most commonplace dreams he had never made love so briefly. He
startled himself.

"Don't!" in a short, decisive tone, as if he were merely teasing.

"Sylvie, I am in earnest;" and in his tone the man spoke.

"Then I think you are mistaken." She seemed to look at him in the cool
light of invincible candor and honesty.

"No, Sylvie, I am not mistaken," gaining courage that it was to be
argument instead of sentiment. "I have had this purpose in my mind for
some time, and have solicited your aunt's consent. You have only to
say"--

"I have many things to say, but assent is not one of them;" in a voice
that, though low, seemed to cleave the air with a steely ring. "You
think you love me. Perhaps you do--as far as you are capable of loving
any thing beside yourself. You have seen a good deal of me this summer,
and have made up your mind to marry. I possess some of the necessary
requirements, and doubtless suit you better than any mere fashionable
woman. But you have none of that intense desire that makes a matter of
life and death of love, that elects one woman, or forever keeps a vacant
niche in the soul."

"Sylvie!"

Her passionate words stunned him. He turned to her with a puzzled look,
a certain helplessness, as if he were stranded on some far, foreign
shore. And then he met her lustrous eyes, so clear that they were almost
pitiless in the glow of undimmed truth.

"Can you not trust me?" with the gentle reproachfulness so winning to
most women, so confident of a victory over a heart that loves.

"I could trust you to care for no other woman when your word was passed,
but it seems to me," and her heart swelled with something like contempt,
"that you are but playing at love. Marriage in your estimation is a fit
and proper step: your mother likes me, you prefer me to any one else"--

"Good heavens, Sylvie! what more do you want?" and a flood of scarlet
mounted his calm, handsome brow. "When a man chooses a woman out of the
whole circle of his friends and acquaintances, what higher compliment
can he pay her? I have seen women beside those in Yerbury; and, though
it may savor of vanity, I believe there _are_ those who would