the trees. "Was he not afraid that this was a deception like the other?"
"He was not afraid of that; he knew its nature through and through, but sometimes he feared he was too late; that another man had set his mark on that flower, and that its treasures were not for him; at others, he felt sure it was his own, and, at last, he made up his mind that he would speak and find out the truth, and know."
A rabbit scampering suddenly out of the bushes behind us startles me so violently that I leap up, and out of my shallow pocket fall two letters, and lie at my feet. Paul stoops, picks them up, turns to give them to me, when something in my face seems to arrest his attention, and he looks from me to George's big, bold handwriting, and from the letter back to me.
Are either of these from your lover?" he asks, striking them with his fore-finger.
"Yes."
"And he writes to you; you write to him?"
'Yes." (I have written George three bald epistles since I came to Luttrell.)
He does not speak again immediately, but his glance falls upon me heavy as a blow. Ah, me! men are hard taskmasters. Do they love us women at all, save for their own pleasure? Are they not mercilessly cruel when we make them suffer passing pain or discomfort? I want to tell him that it is all a mistake; that if George is my lover, I am not his; but somehow the words refuse to utter themselves. . . .
"I have not told you the end of my story," says Paul Vasher; "will you care to hear it?"
"If you please."
"I don't know how it was I came to tell it you, unless indeed it were to convince you that I do not love Miss Fleming. The
