"Does Hermione tend the flowers?" "Ah!" ejaculated Frank, understanding his friend for the first time; "it is Emma you are attached to. I see! I see! Forgive me, Edgar; passion is so blind to everything but its own object. Of course it is Emma; why shouldn't it be!" Yet for all its assurance his voice had strange tones in it, and Edgar, already annoyed at his own self-betrayal, looked at him suspiciously as they drew away together towards the main street. "I am glad to find this out," said Frank, with a hilarity slightly forced, or so thought his friend, who could not know what thoughts and hopes this discovery had awakened in the other's breast. "You have kept your secret well, but now that I know it you cannot refuse to make me your confidant, when there is so much to tell involving my happiness as well as your own." "I have no happiness, Frank." "Nor I; but I mean to have." "Mean to marry Miss Cavanagh?" "Of course, if I can induce her to marry me." "I do not mean to marry Emma." "You do not? Because she has a secret? because she is involved in a mystery?" "Partly; that would be enough, Frank; but I have another good reason. Miss Emma Cavanagh does not care for me." "You know that? You have asked her?" "A year ago; this is no sudden passion with me; I have loved her all my life." "Edgar! And you mean to give her up?" "Give her up?" "If I were you, nothing would induce me to resign my hopes, not even her own coldness. I _would_ win her. Have you tried again since your return?" "Frank, she is a recluse now; I could not marry a recluse; my wife must play her part in the world, and be my helpmate abroad as well as at home." "Yes, yes; but as I said in my own case, win her love and that will all right itself. No woman's resolve will hold out against a true passion." "But you forget, she has no true passion for me." Frank did not answer; he was musing over the subject. He had had an opportunity for seeing into the hearts of these girls which had been denied to Edgar. Had he seen love there? Yes, but in Hermione's breast, not Emma's. And yet Emma was deeply sad, and it was Emma whom he had just seen walking her restlessness off under the trees at midnight. "Edgar," he suddenly exclaimed, "you may not understand this girl. Their whole existence is a mystery, and so may their hearts be. Won't you tell me how it was she refused you? It may serve to throw some light upon the facts." "What light? She refused me as all coquettish women refuse the men whom they have led to believe in their affection." "Ah! you once believed, then, in her affection." "Should I have offered myself if I had not?" "I don't know; I only know I didn't wait for any such belief on the part of Hermione." "You are impulsive, Frank, I am not; I weigh well what I do, fortunately for myself." "Yet you did not prosper in this affair."