e since I've been here. Often and often I've said to myself, 'I will
go away and never look upon her face again.' But I have not gone."

"No," the girl says, feeling curiously abashed and contrite under the
gaze of those calmly accusing eyes. "I'm sorry if--if I have been rude
to you."

"I am glad to hear you say so. You have been rude certainly, but I am
quite ready to forgive all that--quite ready to shake hands and be
friends, if you care to have it so. If not, it is better that I should
go away--at once."

She most certainly is not fond of this man; and yet she feels pained at
the mere thought of his going away "at once." She holds out her hand
almost pleadingly.

"Oh, do not go away, please!" looking at him with sweet, grave eyes. "I
would rather shake hands and be friends."

"So be it!" he says, taking her hand, and holding it for a second in
both his own.

He is a man of the world, strong and self-repressed; yet now he turns
suddenly pale, and his eyes darken.

"Heavens, child, how I love you!" he cries; and the next instant he has
stooped and kissed her on the lips. It is done in a second. The girl
looks up at him from among her pillows, as hurt and angry as if the
kiss had been a blow; and he looks back at her, amazed at his own
audacity.

"On my honor, I did not mean to do it!" he says, almost humbly. "I did
not know I should be such a weak fool as to yield to temptation in that
mad fashion, only I love you so, and you----"

"And I am 'only an Irish girl,'" she interrupts him
vehemently--"little better than a savage in your eyes. If I had been an
English lady you would never have taken such a liberty--never!"

Her passionate resentment angers him, slow to anger as he is by nature
and habit.

"If you hate me so much, Honor, that the touch of my lips insults you
beyond forgiveness, the sooner we part the better," he says bitterly.

"You would please me best by going away, and never letting me see your
face again," she answers with equal bitterness.

There is the sound of a step on the gravel, and a man's laugh--a
peculiar vibrating laugh that brings the color into Honor's
face--reaches them in the stillness.

But the steps pass on, and do not come near their corner among the old
fruit-trees. Brian Beresford bends nearer to the girl, lying there amid
the bending branches, with the sunshine on her averted face.

"You are only a child, Honor, for all your twenty summers! You no more
know your ow