Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/128

118 "Please be sensible."

"You are very much like your mother. She must have been charming."

"Poor thing! She paid dearly for it," said Gwyneth, with a sigh.

"You shall not suffer for your beauty and spirit, my darling."

"I value this," said the girl, "more than anything I possess."

"Save me," suggested the young man.

"And my father."

"Well?"

"I give it to you—though you do not deserve it—for your persistency, on the condition that you permit no one to see it. Rather than be the cause of trouble in the valley, I would do anything," said Gwyneth, with warmth.

"Even to giving me up?"

"I do not say that; but, Travers dear, you must not come to see me so often."

"I shall take the reflection of you here," said the young man, putting the silver case into his breast-pocket; "and in my heart; but I must pop in and see you sometimes."

"Once a week," she suggested.

"Once a day only," he replied, as, snatching a kiss, he leapt the hedge and disappeared.

Meanwhile the form of another man was stealing away through the embowered beds in the opposite direction, muttering to himself—

"No one shall see it! Oh no!"