"Rather slow, perhaps," answered Mell, putting it as mildly on a strained case, as the case would bear, "but there's nobody to blame for it, but myself. If I wasn't such a fool in some respects, I might have had a--a perfectly gorgeous time. _You_ would have given me all the good time a girl need to look for." "But you wouldn't let me!" "Well, you see," explained Mell, warming with her subject, "I had promised Miss Josey--" "Never promise her anything again!" "I don't think I will! But, as I was saying, I promised her to come and take Miss Rutland's place--to come for that very purpose, and when I make a promise, however hard, I'm going to keep it." "Bravo for you! Not every girl does that." "Every high-principled girl does." Her tones were severely uncompromising. "_Ought to_, you mean," rejoined her companion, with an incredulous laugh. "No--_does!_" Light words, lightly spoken, lightly gone! Alas! How these bubbles of talk, subtle as air, come back home after a time, to twit us with scorn, to taunt us with falsity, to impute wrong unto us, to arraign, to accuse, to denounce, to condemn out of our own lips. "Here we are," said Mell's companion, still laughing at the idea of a young woman thinking it necessary to hold tight to her word. "Here we are. Now sit right down here and rest your head comfortably against this tree. I'll be back in a twinkling." So he was, with a plate in his hand filled with edibles, and a bottle of sparkling wine. "Eat," commanded this eminently practical young man; "eat and drink. That's all you need now to fetch you round completely." This settled the question, and settled it most judiciously and satisfactorily. The solid food proved a balm of comfort to that desolate goneness within her, which Mell had wrongly ascribed as due entirely to the volcanic derangement of her heart; and the strong wine sped through her veins a draught of health, a cordial to the mind, a rosy elixir of life. Mell began to take some interest in her companion and her present surroundings. She recognized in them a certain claim to her consideration, and a certain charm. This young stranger was a gentleman in looks and bearing; he had some manliness in his nature, nevertheless, (Mell felt down on gentlemen) and a heart as brimming full of charity as St. Vincent de Paul, himself. He was not ashamed among all his fine friends, to speak to a simple country girl, who, destitute of fortune, had nothing to commend her but innate modesty and God-given beauty. So far from being ashamed, he was ministering to her wants as no one had ever ministered to them before--as kindly and courteously as if she were in every respect his equal in social standing. Jerome would not speak to her, and this gentleman, in her weakness, held the cup to her lips, and put the food into her mouth with his own hands. "I'll pray for him this very night," thought Mell, and moistened the thought with a grateful tear.