his her favorite hour for rambling?
Is she a spirit? Or a lunatic? Yes, that must be it.

Meanwhile through the moonlight--in it--comes Molly, very slowly, a
perfect creature, in trailing, snowy robes. Luttrell, forgetting the
inevitable cigar,--a great concession,--stands mutely regarding her as,
with warm parted lips and a smile, half amused, half wondering, she
gazes back at him.

"Even a plain woman may gain beauty from a moonbeam; what, then, must a
lovely woman seem when clothed in its pure rays?"

"You are welcome,--very welcome," says Molly, at length, in her low,
soft voice.

"Thank you," returns he, mechanically, still lost in conjecture.

"I am not a fairy, nor a spirit, nor yet a vision," murmurs Molly, now
openly amused. "Have no fear. See," holding out to him a slim cool hand;
"touch me, and be convinced, I am only Molly Massereene."

He takes the hand and holds it closely, still entranced. Already--even
though three minutes have scarcely marked their acquaintance--he is
dimly conscious that there might possibly be worse things in this world
than a perpetual near-to "only Molly Massereene."

"So you did come," she goes on, withdrawing her fingers slowly but
positively, and with a faint uplifting of her straight brows, "after
all. I was so afraid you _wouldn't_, you were so long. John--we _all_
thought you had thrown us over."

To have Beauty declare herself overjoyed at the mere fact of your
presence is, under any circumstances, intoxicating. To have such an
avowal made beneath the romantic light of a summer moon is maddening.

"You _cared_?" says Luttrell, in hopeful doubt.

"Cared!" with a low gay laugh. "I should think I did care. I quite
_longed_ for you to come. If you only knew as well as I do the terrible,
never-ending dullness of this place, you would understand how one could
long for the coming of _any one_."

Try as he will, he cannot convince himself that the termination of this
sentence is as satisfactory as its commencement.

"When the evening wore on," with a little depressed shake of her head,
"and still you made no sign, and I began to feel sure it was all too
good to be true, and that you were about to disappoint me and plead some
hateful excuse by the morning post, I almost hated you, and was never in
such a rage in my life. But," again holding out her hand to him, with a
charming smile "I forgive you now."

"Then forgive me one thing more,--my ignorance," says Luttrell, re