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338 his dark face and seeks my lips with all the unsated hunger of the first kiss, I turn my head quickly away and hide it on his breast. Shall I receive the kisses of this new lover while the words uttered by the old one have scarcely ceased to echo in my ears?

"What is this?" asks Paul, holding me away from him to look keenly into my face: "after all, do you not love me, child? I should have waited for an answer to my question. Do you love me, my sweetheart, my flower?" he asks, looking into my face with a passion of tenderness.

"Love you?" I answer, with a long, long sigh. "What is love? But let me go now, Mr. Vasher; let me go!"

"Let you go?" he says, smoothing my hair back from my face, now that I have just got my little witch? No! I will keep you safe enough, love, never fear!"

"But you do not know," I say, anxiously; "you do not understand; it is so quick, so soon."

"Soon! and you have kept me at arm's length for more than a month! Ah! child, if you had known the restraint I had to put upon myself over and over again. I almost broke down."

"Did you love me all that time?" I ask, softly. "Are you sure you did?"

"Loved you!" he says; "I think I have loved you ever since the Silverbridge days. I know I have loved you ever since the day I met you in yonder field. I never was so sorry to say good-bye to any one as when I said it to you under the porch at the Manor House, and all the while I was getting through that confounded business in town, I was fidgetting to get back to Silverbridge, and if it had not been for the absurdity of the thing, I should have come back just to get an hour's glimpse of you. Then I was obliged to go to the Luttrells, never dreaming they were relations of yours, and there I found you; and, sweet, I had not known you a week before I lost my head completely. Living as