"Why did you not keep one?" she said, bending over her nosegay as if
absorbed in its arrangement. "They are so rare that I hardly know how to
spare any." Which was a bit of innocent coquetry on Margaret's part.

"Just one," he pleaded. "As a reward. As a memento."

"A memento of what?" she asked, separating one or two flowers from the
bunch as she spoke.

"Of this occasion."

"It is such an important occasion, is it not?" she said, with a sweet,
mocking little laugh.

"A very important occasion to me. Have I not met you?"

"That is a most charming compliment," said Margaret, who was not unused
to hearing words of this kind in London drawing-rooms, and was quite in
her native element. "In reward for it I will give you a flower--which of
course you will throw away as soon as I am out of sight."

"No, not when you are out of sight: when you are out of mind," he said,
significantly.

"The two are synonymous," said Margaret.

"Are they? Not with me. Throw it away? I will show you that it shall not
be thrown away."

He produced a little pocket-book and put the forget-me-nots into it,
carefully pressing them down against a blank page.

"There," he said, as he made a note in pencil at the bottom of the page,
"that will be always with me now."

"The poor forget-me-not!" said Margaret, smiling. "What a sad fate for
it! To be torn from its home by the brook, taken away from the sun and
the air, to languish out its life in a pocket-book."

"It should feel itself honored," Said Wyvis, "because it is dying for
you."

As we have said, this strain of half-jesting compliment was not
unfamiliar to Margaret; but she could hardly remain unconscious of the
fact that a deeper note had crept into his voice during the last few
words, and that his eyes glowed with a fire more ardent than she usually
saw. She drew back a little, and looked down: she was not exactly
displeased, but she was embarrassed. He noticed and understood the
expression of her face; and changed his tone immediately.

"This is a pretty place," he said, indicating the park and the distant
woods by a wave of his hand. "I always regret that I have been away from
it so long."

"You have lived a great deal in France, I believe?"

"Yes, and in Italy, too. But I tired of foreign lands at last, and
persuaded my mother to come home with me. I am glad that I came."

"You like the neighborhood?" said Margaret, in a tone of conventional
interest.

Wyvis laughed.