I did not say I would not, but then I did not do it; and yet I felt sick and faint at the thought of his coming wrath and indignation. Well I might! Cornelius had the fiery blood of his race; but his temper was so easy and pleasant, that you could spend weeks with him and never suspect--save perhaps for too sudden a light in his eyes--that he could be roused to violent passion. Provoked beyond endurance by my obstinacy, he now turned pale with anger; he left by his work to stride up to me; I quailed before his look and shrank back. Miriam rose, swiftly stepped in between us, and placed me behind her, as if for protection. "Mr. O'Reilly!" she exclaimed, "command yourself." She spoke with a look of reproof and authority. Cornelius gazed at her with wonder, then coloured to the very temples. "Oh! Miriam," he said, drawing back from her with a glance of the keenest reproach, "how could you imagine such a thing?" He looked as if he could not even name it; then perceiving me as I still stood behind Miriam, he took me by the hand, and, sitting down on the sofa, he held me from him, looking me intently in the face as he slowly said-- "And did you too think I meant, I will not say to hurt, but so much as touch you?" I looked at him; I thought of all his past kindness,--my heart swelled, the tears which had not flowed at his anger, gushed forth with the question; I threw my arms around his neck. "Oh no, no!" I cried, "I never did think that, Cornelius, and I never could." "Never?" he echoed; "are you sure, Daisy?" "Never," I replied almost passionately, "never, Cornelius; if I angered you ever so much; if I saw your very hand raised against me, I should not fear one moment--for I know it never would come down." His lips trembled slightly, the only sign of emotion he betrayed. He looked at me; our eyes met, and I felt that there was in his something which answered to all the love and faith of my heart. "You have been very perverse," he said, at length; "you have provoked me, so that I have lost all my self-control; but for the sake of those words, it shall not only be all forgiven to you, but if ever we quarrel again, remember that, whatever you may have done, you need only remind me of this day, for peace to be once more between us." He pressed me to his heart and kissed me repeatedly, then put me away, rose and went up to Miriam. She stood where he had left her, pale and almost defiant-looking, as if she already repelled the expected reproaches of Cornelius. "I beg your pardon," he said very gravely. "My pardon?" she replied, looking up at him with a cold doubt in her eyes. "Your pardon," he repeated precisely in the same tone. "When I stepped up to Daisy, it was to take her by the hand and lead her out of the room, a little indignity which I thought her obstinacy merited; but how utterly I must have lost my temper, how much I must have forgotten myself, for you to misunderstand me so cruelly?"