Ten days had passed, and during those ten days Gwen had met both Hiram and Colin on two or three occasions. Each time she saw them together she was careful to talk a great deal more with the young American than with his English companion. At last, one Sunday afternoon, both the young men \'had gone out to the Villa Panormi with Audouin, for a cup of afternoon tea in the garden; and after tea was over, they had stolen away in pairs down the long alleys of oranges, and among the broken statues and tazzas filled with flowers upon the mouldering balustraded Italian terraces. \'Come with me, Mr. Winthrop,\' Gwen cried gaily to Hiram (with a side glance at Colin once more to see how he took it). \'I want to show you such a lovely spot for one of your pretty little watercolour sketches—a bower of clematis, with such great prickly pears and aloes for the foreground, that I\'m sure you\'ll fall in love with the whole picture the moment you see it.\'

Hiram followed her gladly down to the arbour, a little corner at the bottom of the garden, rather English than Italian in its first conception, but thickly overgrown with tangled masses of sub-tropical vegetation. It\'s very pretty,\' he said, \'certainly very pretty. Just the sort of thing that Mr. Audouin would absolutely revel in.\'

\'Shall I call him?\' Gwen asked, going to the door of the arbour and looking about her carelessly. \'He must be somewhere or other hereabout.\'

\'Oh no, don\'t, Miss Russell,\' Hiram answered hastily. \'He\'s having a long talk with Churchill about art, from what I overheard. Don\'t disturb them. Mr. Audouin has a wonderful taste in art, you know: I love to hear him talk about it in his own original pellucid fashion.\'

\'You\'re very fond of him, aren\'t you?\' Gwen asked, looking at him with her big beautiful eyes. \'Is he any relation of yours?\' \'Relation!\' Hiram cried, \'oh dear no, Miss Bussell. But he\'s been so kind to me, so very kind to me! You can\'t imagine how much I owe to Mr. Audouin.\'

He said it so earnestly, and seemed to want so much to talk about him, that Gwen sat down upon the stone seat in the little arbour and answered with womanly interest, \'Tell me all about it, then, Mr. Winthrop. I should like to hear how you came to pick up with him.\'

Thus encouraged, Hiram, to his own immense astonishment, let loose the floodgates of his pent-up speech, and began to narrate the whole story of his lonely childhood, and of his first meeting with Audouin in the primeval woods of Geauga County. He was flattered that Gwen should have asked him indirectly for his history: more flattered still to find that she listened to his hasty reminiscences with evident attention. He told her briefly about his early attempts at drawing in the blackberry bottom; how the deacon had regarded his artistic impulses as so many proofs of original sin; how he had followed the trappers out into the frozen woodland; how he had met Audouin there by accident; and how Audouin had praised his drawings and encouraged him in his fancies, being the first human being he had ever known who cared at all for any of these things. \'And when you spoke so kindly about my poor little landscape the other day, Miss Russell,\' he added, looking down and hesitating, \'I felt more happy than I had ever felt before since that day so long ago, in the woods away over yonder in America.\'

But Gwen only smiled back a frank smile of unaffected sympathy, and answered warmly, \'I\'m so glad you think so much of my criticism, I\'m sure, Mr. Winthrop.\'

Then Hiram went on and told her how he had worked and struggled at school and college, and at the block-cutting establishment; and how he had longed to go to England and be an artist; and how he had never got the opportunity. And then he spoke of the first day he had ever seen Gwen herself by the Lake of the Thousand Islands.

Till that moment it hadn\'t struck Gwen how very earnest Hiram\'s voice was gradually growing; but as he came to that first chance meeting at Alexandria Bay, she couldn\'t help observing that his lips began to tremble a little, and that his words were thick with emotion. For a second she thought she ought to rise up and suggest that they should join the others over yonder in the garden: but then she changed her mind again, and felt sure she must be mistaken. The young American artist could never mean to have the boldness to propose to her on the strength of so little encouragement. And besides, his story was really so interesting, and she was so very anxious to hear out the rest of it to the very end.

\'And so you liked England immensely?\' she asked him, when he reached in due course that part of his simple straightforward confidences. \'I wonder you didn\'t stop there and take regularly to landscape painting.\'

\'I was sorely tempted to stop,\' Hiram answered, daring to look her straight in the eyes now; for he almost flattered himself she knew what he was going to say to her next.

\'I came away from England most reluctantly, at Mr. Audouin\'s particular request: but I longed at the time to remain, for I had borne two words ringing in my ears from America to England, and those two words were just two names—Gwen and Chester.\'

Gwen started away suddenly with a half-frightened expression, and said to him in a colder tone, \'Why, what do you mean? Explain yourself, please, Mr. Winthrop. My name you know is Gwen, and papa and I used once to live in Chester.\'

Hiram took her hand timidly in his with an air of gentle command, and made her sit down again once more for a minute upon the seat in the arbour. \'You must hear me out to the end now, Miss Bussell,\' he said in a very soft, firm voice, \'whatever comes of it. You mustn\'t go away yet. I didn\'t mean to speak so soon, but I have been hurried into it. I\'ve staked my whole existence on a single throw, and you mustn\'t run away and leave me in the midst of it undecided.\'

Gwen turned pale with nervousness, and withdrew her hand, but sat quite still, and listened to him attentively.

\'From the first moment I ever saw you, Miss Russell,\' he went on passionately, \'I felt you were the only woman I had ever loved or ever could love. I didn\'t know your full name, or who you were, or where you lived; but I heard your father call you Gwen, and I heard you say you had been at Chester. Those were the only two things I knew at all about you. And from the day when I saw you there looking over my sketch beside the Thousand Islands, I kept those two names of Gwen and Chester engraved upon my heart until I came to Europe. I keep one of them engraved there still until this very minute. And whatever you say to me, I shall keep it there unaltered until I die.... Oh, Miss Russell, I don\'t want you to give me an answer at once, I hope you won\'t give me an answer at once, because I can see from your face what that answer would most likely be: but I love you, I love you, I love you; and as long as I live I shall always, always love you.\'

\'I think, Mr. Winthrop,\' Gwen sai............