tease me till I tell you. I don't know how to say it."
"Say it you must, though, my queen."
"Of course I must. You have got what you call a strong will. Isn't that it?"
"That is it," he assents, with a nod which is both careless and determined.
"And are never to be turned from your purpose?"
"Never. That is the only way to get on in life, and I mean to get on."
"Nothing can prevent that. You are so clever that I am half inclined to be frightened of you. And I should be, if I were not sure you loved me."
He kisses her as he observes, "Put the strongest will into the crucible of love, and it melts like lead in a furnace. In such a test steel would become as pliant as running water. Love is the most intoxicating poison, my darling."
"I don't like the word," she says.
"The word 'darling'?" he inquires.
"No, the word 'poison.' Love is not a poison; it is an elixir." She winds her arms round his neck, and murmurs, "It has given me a new life. The world is more beautiful than it used to be I am sure."
He smiles at her sentiment. "I remember telling you once that you had a strong will of your own, Nelly."
"I haven't that much," she says, placing the nail of her thumb to the tip of her little finger. "Not that much!"
"But you are a cunning puss, for all that," he says, as he draws her face to his. They are in the cottage now, and she is sitting on his knee. "You want to fly away from the subject we were speaking of, so my strong will must bring you back to it. Well, I'll be content with a compromise. Who is this lover that so limits your knowledge?"
"I shall not tell you that, sir. You must guess it-if you can! As if you could! No, I'll not say! I can keep a secret. Oh, you may laugh, but I can!"
"Well, then, where is he?"
"Where? Why, thousands of miles away of course!"
"Let me not catch him!" he cries gaily. "Well, now, pet, to spite that person, who I hope will not suffer very much in consequence, I intend to stop with you a whole fortnight."
Her face lights up with joy.
"I have important business in London," he continues, with a sly laugh; "oh, most important! My presence is imperatively required in the great city. The interests of an influential client depend personally upon me, so Lady Temple has given me leave of absence. Confiding old soul!"
"Lady Temple is the same as ever?"
"The same as ever. No change. Fretful and peevish, throwing out all sorts of dark innuendoes one minute, and smiling upon me the next. Now a lamb, now a tigress. I have the temper of an angel, Nell, or I could never stand it. But I humour her-for your sake, pet, as well as my own. Our future depends upon her.
"Does she speak of me?"
"She mentioned your name once last week, and not amiably. But enough of her. Goodbye, my worthy aunt, for a happy fortnight. If she guessed how matters stood, Nell, between me and you, I should be-well, best not think of that. The prospect is not a pleasant one. Now tell me how you have passed the time, how many new laid-eggs you get a day, and how the chickens are, whether the new little pig has any idea of its ultimate fate, how the fruit is getting on, and how you like the new boy I sent to look after the stable. You did not want him you wrote to me; but thereby hangs a tale, which you shall hear presently. Upon my word, Nell, I suspect he is in love with you, like everybody else who sees you. I have a kind of belief that you are a love-witch. He never took his eyes off you, all the time he was waiting for my nag. Now for the reason of his being here. Nelly, to-morrow morning, before you are up, there will arrive at this little cottage the prettiest basket-carriage and the prettiest pair of ponies in England. A present for you, pet, from your lover thousands of miles away. Ah, you kiss me for that, do you! Then I take it, you are pleased with this mysterious lover of yours!"
"I believe no woman in the world was ever half so happy as I. When you are with me, there is not a cloud on my life."
"That's a good hearing," he says, heartily. "Why, Nelly, you are a living wonder! A satisfied woman! I shall scarcely be surprised to hear you say you have not a wish ungratified."
"Not quite that. I have one wish."
"To wit," he prompts.
She whispers it to him.
"That the next fortnight would last for ever, so that you would never have to leave me!"
"A woman's wish all over," he says. "But the old man with the scythe will not be denied, my pet. While lovers dream, time flies the faster, I can't imagine you with white hair, Nell; yet you would look lovely anyway."
" Your hair will be white, too, remember," she says, in a tone of tender jesting. "It will be strange to look back so many years, and think and talk of the past. But we shall be to each other then what we are now. Say that we shall."
"Say it! I swear it, my pet! Let Time do his worst, then. You shall not pluck another white hair out of my head. Nelly, I love you more and more every day of my life."
"And nothing shall ever part us!"
"Nothing, my darling!"
She is, indeed, supremely happy. The springtime of youth and love is hers, and no deeper heresy could have been whispered to her than the warning such a springtime resembles
"The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by-and-by a cloud takes all away."
The minutes fly all too quickly, and Love, with magic brush, paints the present and the time to come.
PART THE FOURTH
Fifteen months have passed. It is winter, and the snow is falling; weather-wise men say that it will continue to fall for days. Peaceful and solemn are the fields, with Nature's carpet of virgin snow covering and protecting the seedlings in the soil beneath. White and graceful devices beautify the woods, the traceries of which are so wonderfully delicate and exquisite that none but spirit fingers could have shaped them, and every little branch stands out bright and clear in the life-giving air.
The scene is the same as the last, but the pretty cottage shows signs of neglect. Our Nelly is there, and there is also a change in her. She is no longer the bright and winsome girl we looked upon a short time since. Her face is thin and haggard, and the expression on her features is one of despair and agony. In the clear light of the healthy winter's day she walks up and down, and round and round the little room where love once dwelt, and where she called up fair visions. Her fingers are tightly interlaced, her lips are white and trembling, her eyes dilate with fear and helpless bewilderment. She does not speak, and for an hour at least she walks about the room with tumultuous agony at her breast.
Watching her from without, with sympathising eyes, and with an air which denotes that he bears magnetically a share in her pain, is the stable-lad who was hired to look after the prettiest pair of ponies in the world, a present to her from her lover, who vowed that nothing should ever part them-from her lover, who had stolen "her soul with many vows of love, and ne'er a true one." And ne'er a true one! Ah, kind Heaven, can it be possible? Can such treachery
