And she stretched out her hand imploringly, but he shook his head and smiled with a curious satisfied smile; and again Mary insisted on a re-exchange of the flowers. 'Please, do not urge me,' said he, also adopting an imploring tone. 'I wish to keep them--to keep them for ever, if you will permit me; whatever has touched your cheek--your hand, must be sacred to me,' he added, with perfect earnestness of manner. 'Do not talk to me thus--for your own amusement, Captain Colville,' said Mary, her eyes suffused with tears. 'Amusement!' he repeated, with a low tone of pain. 'Can you think so meanly of me? If you knew the genuine emotion of my heart towards you, Mary Wellwood, and the true regard with which you have inspired me----' 'I cannot, must not, listen to this,' said poor Mary, attempting to rise in alarm, and most loth to precipitate a scene, but a touch of his hand restrained her. 'Not listen to me! And why not?' asked Colville; and then he remembered Blanche Galloway's insinuation about young Wodrow, and paused. 'It is unbecoming your position and mine, I feel that you are but amusing yourself with me,' continued Mary, repressing a sob in her slender white throat with difficulty. 'You are a rich man of fashion--a man about town, I believe the term is; I am but the orphan daughter of a very poor one----' 'Of a gallant old officer,' said Colville, softly. 'True.' 'And you actually think me a snob? It is very hard. Ere long I shall get another to plead for me,' he added, laughing. 'What can he mean?' thought Mary. 'You pardon me just now,' said he, looking down upon her with great tenderness. 'Yes,' said Mary, sweetly and simply; 'but do not offend me again.' And bright though the sunny landscape around her, it seemed for a moment to grow brighter to her eyes, and her pulses quickened, for she felt a thrill at the tone of his voice and the expression of his eyes. She felt too, somehow, as if the world would never seem quite the same to her afterwards; and with this was blended an emotion of pain that these feelings were excited in her breast aimlessly and uselessly by the affianced of another! It was almost a relief to her when he laughed, and, breaking the silence of a full minute or so, said, 'Now, I am about to rival your sister, Miss Ellinor, in the achievement of something artistic,' and, opening a pocket-knife, he proceeded to carve on the fine smooth bark of a tree that overshadowed the rustic sofa the letters 'M.W.' 'My initials,' said Mary, watching his work. 'Yes.' 'I don't think Lord Dunkeld will thank you for injuring his timber thus.' 'I don't care about Dunkeld's timber. I've a good mind to be like that fellow in Shakespeare--what's his name?--Orlando, and "Carve on every tree The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she." Queer phrase that--means inexpressible, I suppose. See!' he added, as he quickly cut three other initials beside Mary's--L.W.C.--and the date.