"Yes, she has heard something!" That is his first thought. How to counteract the probable influence of that "something" is the second. A little dwelling upon causes and effects shows him the way. For an effect there is often an antidote!

"Delicious indeed!" says Dysart, in answer to her remark. His answer is, however, a little _distrait_. His determination of last night to bring her here, and compel her to listen to the honest promptings of his heart is still strong within him.

They have now ascended the hill, and, standing on its summit, can look down on the wild deep sea beneath them that lies, to all possible seeming, as calm and pa.s.sive at their feet as might a thing inanimate.

Yet within its depths what terrible--what mournful tragedies lie! And, as if in contrast, what ecstatic joys! To one it speaks like death itself--to another:

"The bridegroom sea Is toying with the sh.o.r.e, his wedded bride, And in the fullness of his marriage joy He decorates her tawny brow with sh.e.l.ls, Retires a pace to see how fair she looks, Then, proud, runs up to kiss her."

"Shall we sit here?" says Dysart, indicating a soft mound of gra.s.s that overlooks the bay. "You must be tired after last night's dancing."

"I _am_ tired," says she, sinking upon the soft cushion that Nature has provided with a little sigh of satisfaction.

"Perhaps I should not have asked--have extracted--a promise from you to come here," says Dysart, with contrition in his tone. "I should have remembered you would be overdone, and that a long walk like this----"

"Would be the very thing to restore me to a proper state of health," she interrupts him, with the prettiest smile. "No, don't pretend you are sorry you brought me here. You know it is the sheerest hypocrisy on your part. You are glad, that you brought me here, I hope, and I"--deliberately--"am glad that you did."

"Do you mean that?" says Dysart, gravely. He had not seated himself beside her, and is now looking down her from a goodly height. "Do you know why I brought you?"

"To bring me back again as fresh as a daisy," suggests she, with a laugh that is spoiled in its birth by a glance from him.

"No, I did not think of you at all. I thought only of myself," says Dysart, speaking a little quickly now. "Call that selfish if you will--and yet----"

He stops short, and comes closer to her. "To think in that way was to think of you too. Joyce, there is at all events one thing you do know--that I love you."

Miss Kavanagh nods her head silently.

"There is one thing, too, that I know," says Dysart now with a little tremble in his voice, "that you do not love me!"

She is silent.

"You are honest," says he, after a pause. "Still"--looking at her--"if there wasn't hope one would know. Though the present is empty for me, I cannot help dwelling on the thought that the future may contain--something!"

"The future is so untranslatable," says she, with a little evasion.

"Tell me this at least," says Dysart, very earnestly, bending over her with the air of one determined to sift his chances to the last grain, "you like me?"

"Oh, yes."

"Better than Courtenay, for example?" with a fleeting smile that fails to disguise the real anxiety he is enduring.

"What an absurd question!"

"Than d.i.c.ky Brown?"

"Yes."

But here she lifts her head and gazes at him in a startled way that speaks of quick suspicion. There is something of entreaty, too, in her dark eyes, a desire that he will go no further.

But Dysart deliberately disregards it.

"Than Beauclerk?" asks he in a clear, almost cruel tone.

A horrible red rushes up to dye her pretty cheeks, in spite of all her efforts to subdue it. Great tears of shame and confusion suffuse her eyes. One little reproachful glance she casts at him, and then:

"Of course," says she, almost vehemently, if a little faintly, her eyes sinking to the ground.

Dysart stands before her as if stricken into stone. Then the knowledge that he has hurt her pierces him with a terrible certainty, overcomes all other thoughts, and drives him to repentance.

"I shouldn't have asked you that," says he bluntly.

"No, no!" says she, acquiescing quickly, "and yet," raising an eager, lovely face to his, "I hardly know anything about--about myself.

Sometimes I think I like him, sometimes----" She stops abruptly and looks at him with a pained and frightened gaze. "Do you despise me for betraying myself like this?"

"No--I want to hear all about it."

"Ah! That is what I want to hear myself. But who is to tell me? Nature won't. Sometimes I hate him. Last night----"

"Yes, I know. You hated him last night. I don't wish to know why. I am quite satisfied in that you did so."

"But shall I hate him to-morrow? Oh, yes, I think so--I hope so," cries she suddenly. "I am tired of it all. He is not a real person, not one possible to cla.s.s. He is false--naturally treacherous, and yet----"

She breaks off again very abruptly, and turns to Dysart as if for help.

"Let us forget him," she says, and then in a little frightened way, "Oh, I wish I could be sure I could forget him!"

"Why can't you?" says Dysart, in his downright way. "It means only a strong effort after all. If you feel honestly," with an earnest glance at her, "like that toward him, you must be mad to give him even a corner in your heart."

"That is it," says she, "there the puzzle begins. I don't know if he ever has a corner in my heart. He attracts me, but attraction is not affection, and the heart holds only love and hatred. Indifference is nothing."

"You can get rid of him finally," says Dysart, boldly, "by giving yourself to me. That will kill all----"

All he may be going to say is killed on his lips at this moment by two little wild shrieks of joy that sound right behind his head. Both he and Joyce turn abruptly in its direction--he with a sense of angry astonishment, she with a fell knowledge of its meaning. It is, indeed, no surprise to her when Tommy and Mabel appear suddenly from behind the rock just close to them, that hides the path in part, and precipitates themselves into her arms.

"We saw you, we saw you!" gasps Tommy, breathless from his run up the hill: "we saw you far away down there on the road, and we told Bridgie"

(the maid) "that we'd run up, and she said 'cut along,' so here we are."

"You are, indeed," says Dysart, with feeling.

"We knew you'd be glad to see us," goes on Tommy to Joyce in the beautiful roar he always adopts when excited; "you haven't been home for years, and Bridgie says that's because you are going to be married to----"

"Get up, Tommy, you are too heavy, and, besides, I want to kiss Mabel,"

says Tommy's aunt with prodigious haste and a hot cheek.

"But mammy says you're a silly Billy," says Mabel in her shrill treble, "an' that----"

"Mammy is a shockingly rude person," says Mr. Dysart, hurrying to break into the dangerous confidence, no matter at what cost, even at the expense of the adored mammy. His remark is taken very badly.