ut your fortune to the touch," says Joyce
quietly; "if you could, disappointment alone would await you."

"You mean----?" ask he, somewhat sharply.

"That were it possible for me to commit such a vulgarity as to run away
with any one, you, certainly, would not be that one. You are the very
last man on earth I should choose for so mistaken an adventure. Let me
also add," says she, turning upon him with flashing eyes, though still
her voice is determinately low and calm, "that you forget yourself
strangely when you talk in this fashion to me." The scorn and
indignation in her charming face is so apparent that it is now
impossible to ignore it. Being thus compelled to acknowledge it he grows
angry. Beauclerk angry is not nice.

"To do myself justice, I seldom do that!" says he, with a rather nasty
laugh. "To forget myself is not part of my calculations. I can generally
remember No. One."

"You will remember me, too, if you please, so long as I am with you,"
says Joyce, with a grave and very gentle dignity, but with a certain
determination that makes itself felt. Beauclerk, conscious of being
somewhat cowed, is bully enough to make one more thrust.

"After all, Dysart was right," says he. "He prophesied there would be
rain. He advised you not to undertake our ill-starred journey
of--yesterday." There is distinct and very malicious meaning in the
emphasis he throws into the last word.

"I begin to think Mr. Dysart is always right," says Joyce, bravely,
though her heart has begun to beat furiously. That terrible fear of what
they will say to her when she gets back--of their anger--their courteous
anger--their condemnation--has been suddenly presented to her again and
her courage dies within her. Dysart, what will he say? It strikes even
herself as strange that his view of her conduct is the one that most
disturbs her.

"Only, beginning to think it? Why, I always understood Dysart was
immaculate--the 'couldn't err' sort of person one reads of but never
sees. You have been slow, surely, to gauge his merits. I confess I have
been even slower. I haven't gauged them yet. But then--Dysart and I were
never much in sympathy with each other."

"No. One can understand that," says she.

"One can, naturally," with the utmost self-complaisance. "I confess,
indeed," with a sudden slight burst of vindictiveness, "that I never
liked Dysart; idiotic sort of fool in my estimation, self-opinionated
like all fools, and deucedly impert