“Oh, thank you, Mr. Campbell; am I to read it?” she said, with puzzled, uncertain looks. Naturally enough she was perplexed and even frightened by such an address; for, as Lauderdale said, her knowledge of poetry was confined to hymns, over which hung an awful shadow from the “Paradise Lost.” She opened Colin’s “copy of verses” timorously as she spoke, and glanced at them, and stumbled at his handwriting, which, like most other people’s in these, scribbling days, was careless and indistinct. “I am sure it is very pretty,” faltered Alice as she got to the end of the page; and then, more timidly still, “What am I to do with it, Mr. Campbell?” asked the poor girl. When she saw the sudden flush that covered his face, Alice’s slumbering faculties were wakened up by the sharp shock of having given pain--which was a fault which she had very seldom consciously committed in the course of her innocent life. Colin was too much a gentleman to lose his temper; but it is impossible to deny that the effort which he made to keep it was a violent one, and required all his manhood. “Keep it if you like it,” he said, with a smile which thinly covered his mortification; “or put it in the fire if you don’t.” He said this as philosophically as was possible under the circumstances. And then he tried a little conversation by way of proving his perfect composure and command of his feelings, during which poor Alice sat fluttered and uncomfortable and self-conscious as she had never been before. Her work was at an end for that night at least. She held Colin’s little poem in her hand, and kept her eyes upon it, and tried with all her might to invent something gracious and complimentary which could be said without offence; for, of course, carefully as he imagined himself to have concealed it, and utterly unconscious of the fact as Lauderdale remained, who was watching them, Alice was as entirely aware of the state of Colin’s mind and temper at the moment as he was himself. After a while he got up and went to Meredith’s table by the fire; and the two began to talk, as Alice imagined, of matters much too serious and momentous to leave either at leisure to remark her movements. When she saw them thus occupied she left the room almost stealthily, carrying with her the tall lamp with its four tongues of flame. She set down her light in her own room when she reached that sanctuary, and once more read and pored over Colin’s poem. There was nothing about love in it, and consequently nothing improper or alarming to Alice. It was all about the Pantheon and its vespers, and the echoes in the dome. But then why did he give it to her? why did he look so much disturbed when she in her surprise and unreadiness hesitated over it? Such an offering was totally new to Alice: how could she be expected to understand exactly how it ought to be received? But it is impossible to describe how vexed and mortified she was to find she had failed of what