at your age. When you are
older you will smile at such moods, and at the mishaps that gave rise to
them.'

'Ah, I perceive you think me weak in the extreme,' he said, with just a
shade of pique. 'But you will never realize that an incident which
filled but a degree in the circle of your thoughts covered the whole
circumference of mine. No person can see exactly what and where
another's horizon is.'

They soon parted, and she re-entered the house, where she sat reflecting
for some time, till she seemed to fear that she had wounded his feelings.
She awoke in the night, and thought and thought on the same thing, till
she had worked herself into a feverish fret about it. When it was
morning she looked across at the tower, and sitting down, impulsively
wrote the following note:--

'DEAR MR. ST. CLEEVE,--I cannot allow you to remain under the
impression that I despised your scientific endeavours in speaking as I
did last night. I think you were too sensitive to my remark. But
perhaps you were agitated with the labours of the day, and I fear that
watching so late at night must make you very weary. If I can help you
again, please let me know. I never realized the grandeur of astronomy
till you showed me how to do so. Also let me know about the new
telescope. Come and see me at any time. After your great kindness in
being my messenger I can never do enough for you. I wish you had a
mother or sister, and pity your loneliness! I am lonely too.--Yours
truly,

VIVIETTE CONSTANTINE.'

She was so anxious that he should get this letter the same day that she
ran across to the column with it during the morning, preferring to be her
own emissary in so curious a case. The door, as she had expected, was
locked; and, slipping the letter under it, she went home again. During
lunch her ardour in the cause of Swithin's hurt feelings cooled down,
till she exclaimed to herself, as she sat at her lonely table, 'What
could have possessed me to write in that way!'

After lunch she went faster to the tower than she had gone in the early
morning, and peeped eagerly into the chink under the door. She could
discern no letter, and, on trying the latch, found that the door would
open. The letter was gone, Swithin having obviously arrived in the
interval.

She blushed a blush which seemed to say, 'I am getting foolishly
interested in this young man.' She had, in short, in her own opinion,
som