small chance of it--in fact none. Yet, even then, Lalante
could not be pronounced unhappy. She had all his love, and he had hers.
No room was there for any shadow of a doubt or misgiving upon that
score, and now she, so to say, bathed herself in its consciousness, even
though temporarily reft of the presence of the other of the two thus
making to themselves a very paradise within the world!

Strange to say, considering her youth, and the circumstances, after the
first natural soreness Lalante had shown no resentment against her
father for the part he had borne in the matter. Him she had treated in
the same way as ever, indeed in a manner calculated to soothe rather
than feed his rancour. On one or two occasions when he had savagely
abused the absent one, she had, with great mastery of self-control,
refrained from angry retort, and had begged him, as a matter of
consideration for her, to refrain from wounding her. "You would not
hurt your little Lalante, would you, dear?" she had said with an arm
round his shoulder. "Well, when you say these things you hurt me as
much as you would if you hit me with a stick or a stone. No--more."
And Le Sage had stared, startled, into the moist eyes, and mumbling
something, had left the room--hurriedly. But he never abused Wyvern
again, at least not in her presence--nor when there was any possibility
of her being within earshot. It is even possible that he might have
relented, and extended a helping hand to the unlucky one, or at any rate
have tolerated a further effort; but the hard, business instinct of the
invariably successful man rose, as a bar--as a very bulkhead of hard
oak--between him and his more human, and better inclinations.

The hot, dreamy hours of the forenoon flowed on, and still Lalante sat,
to all outward appearance doing nothing, but in reality with racing
thoughts. She did not even care to read. You read in order to be taken
out of yourself, which was just what she didn't want. Her father was in
a small inner room, with a pipe in his mouth, making up--we regret to
say, having previously stated that the day was Sunday--certain accounts,
for, in addition to his farming ventures, he did a good deal in the
stock-jobbing line. And the girl sat there, dreaming on, reconstituting
in her mind a retrospection of all that had passed within that year,
which was, if there had ever been such a thing, literally and actually
_annus amoris_.

She recalled, for instanc