rhaps John Law had prescience of the future.

"Oh, sir, I had far liefer I had never seen you," cried Catharine
Knollys, bending a head from whose eyes there dropped sudden tears.

"Ah, dear heart, say anything but that!"

"'Tis a hard way a woman must travel at best in this world," murmured
the Lady Catharine, with wisdom all unsuited to her youth. "But I can
not understand. I had thought that the coming of a lover was a joyous
thing, a time of happiness alone."

"Ah, now, in the hour of mist can you not foresee the time of sunshine?
All life is before us, my sweet, all life. There is much for us to do,
there are so many, many days of love and happiness."

But now the Lady Catharine Knollys veered again, with some sudden change
of the inner currents of the feminine soul.

"I have gone far with you, Mr. Law," said she, suddenly disengaging her
hand. "Yet I did but give you insight of things which any man coming as
you have come should have well within his knowledge. Think not, sir,
that I am easy to be won. I must know you equally honest with myself.
And if you come to my regard, it must be step by step and stair by
stair. This is to be remembered."

"I shall remember."

"Go, then, and leave me for this time," she besought him. But still he
could not go, and still the Lady Catharine could not bid him more
sternly to depart. Youth--youth, and love, and fate were in that room;
and these would have their way.

The beseeching gaze of an eye singular in its power rested on the girl,
a gaze filled with all the strange, half mandatory pleading of youth and
yearning. Once more there came a shift in the tidal currents of the
woman's heart. The Lady Catharine slowly became conscious of a delicious
helplessness, of a sinking and yielding which she could not resist. Her
head lost power to be erect. It slipped forward on a shoulder waiting as
by right. Her breath came in soft measure, and unconsciously a hand was
raised to touch the cheek pressed down to hers. John Law kissed her once
upon the lips. Suddenly, without plan--in spite of all plan--the seal of
a strange fate was set forever on her life!

For a long moment they stood thus, until at length she raised a face
pale and sharp, and pushed back against his breast a hand that trembled.

"'Tis wondrous strange," she whispered.

"Ask nothing," said John Law, "fear nothing. Only believe, as I
believe."

Neither John Law nor the Lady Catharine Knollys saw what was pas