We were alone in the glade, by the side of the spring. At that early hour there were no interruptions to dread; but Cristel was ill at ease. She seemed to be eager to get back to the cottage as soon as possible.

"Father tells me," she began abruptly, "he saw you at the boathouse. And it seemed to him, that you were behaving yourself like a friend to that terrible man."

I reminded her of my having expressed the fear that we had been needlessly hard on him; and, I added that he had written a letter which confirmed me in that opinion. She looked, not only disappointed, but even alarmed.

"I had hoped," she said sadly, "that father was mistaken."

"So little mistaken," I assured her, "that I am going to drink tea with the man who seems to frighten you. I hope he will ask you to meet—"

She recoiled from the bare idea of an invitation.

"Will you hear what I want to tell you?" she said earnestly. "You may alter your opinion if you know what I have been foolish enough to do, when you saw me go to the other side of the cottage."

"Dear Cristel, I know what I owe to your kind interest in me on that occasion!" Before I could say a word of apology for having wronged her by my suspicions, she insisted on an explanation of what I had just said.

"Did he mention it in his letter?" she asked.

I owned that I had obtained my information in this way. And I declared that he had expressed his admiration of her, and his belief in her, in terms which made it a subject of regret to me not to be able to show what he had written.

Cristel forgot her fear of our being interrupted. Her dismay expressed itself in a cry that rang through the wood.

"You even believe in his letter?" she exclaimed. "Mr. Gerard! His writing in that way to You about Me is a proof that he lies; and I\'ll make you see it. If you were anybody else but yourself, I would leave you to your fate. Yes, your fate," she passionately repeated. "Oh, forgive me, sir! I\'m behaving disrespectfully; I beg your pardon. No, no; let me go on. When I spoke to him in your best interests (as I did most truly believe) I never suspected what mischief I had done, till I looked in his face. Then, I saw how he hated you, and how vilely he was thinking in secret of me—"

Pure delusion! How could I allow it to go on? I interrupted her.

"My dear, you have quite mistaken him. As I have already said, he sincerely respects you—and he owns that he misjudged me when he and I first met."

"What! Is that in his letter too? It\'s worse even than I feared. Again, and again, and again, I say it"—she stamped on the ground in the fervor of her conviction—"he hates you with the hatred that never forgives and never forgets. You think him a good man. Do you suppose I would have begged and prayed of my father to send him away, without having reasons that justified me? Mr. Gerard, you force me to tell you what my unlucky visit did put into his head. Yes, he does believe—believes firmly—that you have forgotten what is due to your rank; that I have been wicked enough to forget it too; and that you are going to take me away from him. Say what he may, and write what he may, he is deceiving you for his own wicked ends. If you go to drink tea with him, God only knows what cause you may have to regret it. Forgive me for being so violent, sir; I have done now. You have made me very wretched, but you are too good and kind to mean it. Good-bye."

I took her hand, I pressed it tenderly; I was touched, deeply touched.

No! let me write honestly. Her eyes betrayed her, her voice betrayed her, while she said her parting words. What I saw, what I heard, was no longer within the limits of doubt. The sweet girl\'s interest in my welfare was not the merely friendly interest which she herself believed it to be. And I said just now that I was "touched." Cant! Lies! I loved her more dearly than I had ever loved her yet. There is the truth—stripped of poor prudery, and the mean fear of being called Vain!

What ............