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Rh me when you came; he was so wretched, and it seemed so soon, so indecently soon, for you to make love to me."

"And you care so much as that?" he asks, with a sudden jealousy in his voice that startles me; "you could be sorry for him; could think of him at such a time as this? Heaven knows I had no other woman in my thoughts when I told you that I loved you!"

"Yes, I can," I answer steadily; "and I should not be worthy of your love if I could fling away all memory of his great misery one moment to lose myself in happiness with another lover the next."

"Did you ever care for that man?" he asks coldly, but he does not loose me out of his arms. "Did you ever have the smallest fancy for him?”

"Never!" I answer gravely; "if I had I should be with him, not you, at the present moment, should I not?"

He looks deeply into my eyes, and what he reads there must satisfy him, for he murmurs fond, mad love words over my drooped head, calls me his queen, his heart's delight, his idol.

"Papa may come this way," I say nervously; "he does not often, but he might; let us go and sit down in my parlour."

We cross the bare brown field, and reach my little green chamber, where a big log of wood affords us a seat, and sit down side by side.

"And now," he says, "I am going to show you my little girl;" and out of his breast-pocket he brings a velvet case, touches a spring, the lid flies back, and there, looking out at us from under a veil of hair and a wreath of poppies, is—me!

"How did you get it?" I ask, staring hard at it. (Surely, surely, I never was so pretty as that!)

"I asked an artist who was at the Luttrells' ball, to study your face and paint you with loose hair, and here it is."