"And yet----" She turned and began to pull a honeysuckle to pieces, pouting in the prettiest fashion conceivable.

The graceful curves of the lithe figure provoked me. There was a challenge in her manner, and my blood beat with a surge. I made a step or two toward her.

"And yet?" I repeated, over her shoulder.

One by one the petals floated away.

"There was a time----" She spoke so softly I had to bend over to hear.

I sighed. "A thousand years ago, 'Toinette."

"But love is eternal, and in eternity a thousand years are but as a day."

The long curving lashes were lifted for a moment, and the dancing brown eyes flashed into mine. While mine held them they began to dim. On my soul the little witch contrived to let the dew of tears glisten there. Now a woman's tears are just the one thing Kenneth Montagu cannot resist. After all I am not the first man that has come to make war and stayed to make love.

"'Toinette! 'Toinette!" I chided, resolution melting fast.

"And y'are commanded to love your neighbours, Kenn."

I vow she was the takingest madcap in all England, and not the worst heart neither. I am no Puritan, and youth has its day in which it will be served. My scruples took wing.

"Faith, one might travel far and not do better," I told her. "When the G.o.ds send their best to a man he were a sorry knave to complain."

Yet I stood helpless, in longing desire and yet afraid to dare. No nicety of conscience held me now, rather apprehension. I had not lived my one and twenty years without learning that a young woman may be free of speech and yet discreet of action, that alluring eyes are oft mismated with prim maiden conscience. 'Tis in the blood of some of them to throw down the gauntlet to a man's courage and then to trample on him for daring to accept the challenge.

Her eyes derided me. A scoffing smile crept into that mocking face of hers. No longer I shilly-shallied. She had brought me to dance, and she must pay the piper.

"Modesty is a sweet virtue, but it doesn't b.u.t.ter any bread," I cried gaily. "Egad, I embrace my temptation."

Which same I did, and the temptress too.

"Am I your temptation, Adam?" quoth the lady presently.

"I vow y'are the fairest enticement, Eve, that ever trod the earth since the days of the first Garden. For this heaven of your lips I'll pay any price in reason. A year in purgatory were cheap----"

I stopped, my florid eloquence nipped in bud, for the lady had suddenly begun to disengage herself. Her glance shot straight over my shoulder to the entrance of the summer-house. Divining the presence of an intruder, I turned.

Aileen was standing in the doorway looking at us with an acrid, scornful smile that went to my heart like a knife.

CHAPTER VII

MY LADY RAGES

I was shaken quite out of my exultation. I stood raging at myself in a defiant scorn, struck dumb at the folly that will let a man who loves one woman go sweethearting with another. Her eyes stabbed me, the while I stood there dogged yet grovelling, no word coming to my dry lips. What was there to be said? The tie that bound me to Aileen was indefinable, tenuous, not to be phrased; yet none the less it existed. I stood convicted, for I had tacitly given her to understand that no woman found place in my mind save her, and at the first chance she found another in my arms. Like a detected schoolboy in presence of the rod I awaited my sentence, my heart a trip-hammer, my face a picture of chagrin and dread.

For just a moment she held me in the balance with that dreadful smile on her face, my day of judgment come to earth, then turned and away without a word. I flung wildly after her, intent on explaining what could not be explained. In the night I lost her and went up and down through the shrubbery calling her to come forth, beating the currant and gooseberry bushes in search of her. A shadow flitted past me toward the house, and at the gate I intercepted the girl. Better I had let her alone. My heart misgave me at sight of her face; indeed the whole sweep of her lithesome reedy figure was pregnant with Highland scorn and pride.

"Oh, Aileen, in the arbour----" I was beginning, when she cut me short.

"And I am thinking I owe you an apology for my intrusion. In troth, Mr.

Montagu, my interruption of your love-makings was not intentional."

Her voice gave me the feel of being drenched with ice-water.

"If you will let me explain, Aileen----"

"Indeed, and there iss nothing to explain, sir. It will be none of my business who you are loving, and-- Will you open the gate, Mr. Montagu?"

"But I must explain; 'twas a madness of the blood. You do not understand----"

"And gin I never understand, Mr. Montagu, the lift (sky) will not fall.

Here iss a great to-do about nothing," she flung back with a kind of bitter jauntiness.

"Aileen," I cried, a little wildly, "you will not cast me off without a hearing. Somehow I must make it clear, and you must try----"

"My name it iss Miss Macleod, and I would think it clear enough already at all events. I will be thanking you to let me pa.s.s, sir."

Her words bit, not less the scorch of her eyes. My heart was like running water.

"And is this an end to all-- Will you let so small a thing put a period to our good comradeship?" I cried.

"Since you mention it I would never deny that I am under obligations to you, sir, which my brother will be blithe to repay----"

"By Heaven, I never mentioned obligations; I never thought of them. Is there no friendship in your heart for me?"

"Your regard iss a thing I have valued, but"--there was a little break in the voice which she rode over roughshod--"I can very well be getting along without the friendships of that girl's lover."

She s.n.a.t.c.hed open the gate and flung past me to the house, this superb young creature, tall, slim, supple, a very Diana in her rage, a woman too if one might judge by the b.r.e.a.s.t.s billowing with rising sobs. More slow I followed, quite dashed to earth. All that I had gained by months of service in one moment had been lost. She would think me another of the Volney stamp, and her liking for me would turn to hate as with him.

A low voice from the arbour called "Kenn!" But I had had enough of gallivanting for one night and I held my way sullenly to the house. Swift feet pattered down the path after me, and presently a little hand fell on my arm. I turned, sulky as a baited bear.

"I am so sorry, Kenn," said Mistress Antoinette demurely.

My sardonic laughter echoed cheerlessly. "That there is no more mischief to your hand. Oh never fear! You'll find some other poor breeched gull shortly."

The brown dovelike eyes of the little rip reproached me.

"'Twill all come right, Kenn. She'll never think the worse of you for this."

"I'll be no more to her than a glove outworn. I have lost the only woman I could ever love, and through my own folly, too."

"Alackaday, Kenn! Y' 'ave much to learn about women yet. She will think the more of you for it when her anger is past."

"Not she. One of your fashionables might, but not Aileen."