to her cheek, Moll turns to him, and
says:

"I thought you would have come again. And since one of us must ask to be
forgiven, lo! here am I come to ask your pardon."

"Why, what is there to pardon, Madam?" says he.

"Only a girl's folly, which unforgiven must seem something worse."

"Your utmost folly," says he, "is to have been over-kind to a poor
painter. And if that be an offence, 'tis my misfortune to be no more
offended."

"Have I been over-kind?" says Moll, abashed, as having unwittingly
passed the bounds of maiden modesty.

"As nature will be over-bounteous in one season, strewing so many
flowers in our path that we do underprize them till they are lost, and
all the world seems stricken with wintry desolation."

"Yet, if I have said or done anything unbecoming to my sex--"

"Nothing womanly is unbecoming to a woman," returns he. "And, praised be
God, some still live who have not learned to conceal their nature under
a mask of fashion. If this be due less to your natural free disposition
than to an ignorance of our enlightened modish arts, then could I find
it in my heart to rejoice that you have lived a captive in Barbary."

They had been looking into each other's eyes with the delight of reading
there the love that filled their hearts, but now Moll bent her head as
if she could no longer bear that searching regard, and unable to make
response to his pretty speech, sat twining her fingers in her lap,
silent, with pain and pleasure fluttering over her downcast face. And at
this time I do think she was as near as may be on the point of
confessing she had been no Barbary slave, rather than deceive the man
who loved her, and profit by his faith in her, which had certainly
undone us all; but in her passion, a woman considered the welfare of her
father and best friends very lightly; nay, she will not value her own
body and soul at two straws, but is ready to yield up everything for one
dear smile.

A full minute Mr. Godwin sat gazing at Moll's pretty, blushing, half-hid
face (as if for his last solace), and then, rising slowly from the
little parapet, he says:

"Had I been more generous, I should have spared you this long morning
ride. So you have something to forgive, and we may cry quits!" Then,
stretching forth his hand, he adds, "Farewell."

"Stay," cries Moll, springing to her feet, as fearing to lose him
suddenly again, "I have not eased myself of the burden that lay
uppermost. Oh!" cries she, pa