iolate; and so you will be on hand without fail,
Mell, and so will I, and so will something else."

"What else, Jerome?"

He bent low from his saddle-bow to whisper into her ear:

"That supreme happiness which is present everywhere when you and I are
together. Be sure to come, darling. And now, once more, good-night!"

He galloped off, leaving Mell standing in the gateway, and on the
uncomfortable side of a very knotty point. Did Jerome really love her?
She believed he did--ardently. Did he love her well enough to surmount
those difficulties of which he had spoken? Did he love her well enough
to marry her?

"Aye, there's the rub!" cried Mell. Her mind fairly swarmed with ugly
suspicions, some of them as infinitesimal, and at the same time as
dangerous as those microscopic bacteria which enter the physical
laboratory, disorganizing, and, if not quickly eliminated, destroying
the very stronghold of life itself. And as biological analysis was not
yet, at that time, practiced as a method of research into the germs of
things, Mell must needs fall back entirely upon inferential
deductions.

Those difficulties, what could they be that she might not know them?
If this tantalizing, and yet, withal, most fascinating, of created
beings, truly loved her--loved her in love's highest sense, and with
no thought of deception, would he at every turn put her off with
honeyed words and paltry evasions? Would he have said, "You must
really consent to be guided blindly by my judgment in this matter," if
he valued her as she valued him?

Of one thing she was sure; she would be guided blindly by no human
being, man or woman, in anything.

"_No, I won't!_" she audibly informed the dew-damp lilies and
the secretive rose, stamping her foot to impress it upon their
understanding. Catch any wide-awake, thoroughly independent,
altogether self-sufficient and splendidly educated American girl
going it blind at any man's behest! She would make short work of
his courtship, and him too--first.

Still pacing distractedly up and down the garden path, Mell heard a
window open, saw a head protrude, and heard a voice, which said:

"Send 'im ter his namesake, Mell. Let 'im git thar before he gits the
better o' you!"

"So he shall, father."

"Then go ter bed."

"I am going now--going to bed," she continued, communing with
herself--"to bed, but not to the meadow Thursday morning. I'll cut my
throat from ear to ear, just before I start to the m