looking after them with yellow eyes,
"while others ride, I walk!"

The noise of their clattering feet and merry voices had scarcely died
away, when there came another sound; faint at first and uncertain, it
came nearer and nearer. A solitary horseman dashed up to her side and
dismounted.

"Jerome! Is it you?" exclaimed Mell, with a glad start, forgetting all
the anger she had been nursing against him since yesterday, in the joy
of seeing him again. "How could you tear yourself away from that
lively crowd?"

"One, if she is the right one, is crowd enough for me," declared
Jerome, with a laugh; and throwing his bridle reins negligently across
his arm, he walked along beside her. "When I saw you, Mellville, I
dropped my whip out of pure delight, and as it is a dainty trifle
belonging to Clara--Miss Rutland, that is--adorned with a silver
stag's head and tender associations, I had, of course, to come back
for it. At all events, I could not have closed my eyes this night,
without seeing you, making my humble confessions, and imploring your
forgiveness for my conduct of yesterday. I behaved abominably. I
confess it. I am truly sorry. And, at the risk of falling in your
esteem, I am going to tell you something--my temper is a thing
vile--villainous, but it does not often get the better of me as it did
yesterday. Forgive me, dearest?"

"I am not your dearest," Mell informed him, with head erect.

"Not? Why, how's that? 'Nay, by Saint Jamy,' but you are! I have one
heart, but one, it is all yours; you have one, but one, it is all
mine. We are to each other, dearest, _Ita lex scripta_."

"The matter is one in which I, myself, shall have a say-so."

"You have had a say-so! You have said: 'Jerome, I love you!'"

"How can you speak so falsely? It is not true--I did not say so."

"Not in words," conceded her tormentor, "but you do, all the same,
don't you, petite?"

"I am not your petite, either," protested Mell, driven almost to
desperation.

"No? Then you are sure to be my darling. That's it, Mell! You are
certainly a darling, and mine."

"I am not!" shrieked Mell, choking with anger. This mockery of a sore
subject was really unbearable.

"Not my darling, either?" inquired Jerome, grave as a Mussulman. "Then
what the dickens are you?"

"A woman not to be trifled with," said Mell, hotly; "who finds it much
easier to magnify injuries than to forgive them."

"Like the rest of us," interposed Jerome; "but that is n