He kissed her--the fair young brow, the eyelids wet with tears. Mrs. Jerningham heard that unmistakeable sound, as of song-birds in an aviary; and if a wish could kill, there would have been a swift and sudden foreclosure of two fair lives. “_You_--YOU love me!” faltered Lucy in a whisper. It was too sweet. Ah, yes; a brief delicious dream, no doubt, thought Miss Alford. “Yes, dear, with all my heart I love you,” answered Laurence Desmond, putting her suddenly away from him, with a solemn gesture, symbolical of eternal divorcement. “I love you, my dearest and best; but you and I can never be more to each other than we have been--never again so much; for at least we have been together--and for me even _that_ happiness must never be again.” Lucy looked at him wonderingly, but she did not speak. She was overcome by the one stupendous fact of Laurence Desmond’s confession. He loved her! After this the deluge. If the peaceful rippling river had arisen, mighty as old Nile, to sweep all the villas of Hampton to the distant sea, she would have submitted to the swift destruction, and have deemed herself sufficiently blest in having lived to hear what she had heard. This is how girlhood loves. Unhappily, or it may be happily, such love as this--simple, single, passionate as its sister poetry--perishes with girlhood. The woman’s Love is a compound of many passions, claims cousinship with Pride and Self-esteem, and owns an ugly half-sister called, by her friends, Prudence, by her foes, Calculation. “My dear, I love you,” continued Laurence with gentle gravity, and with the air of a man who has resolved on a full confession. “When first your father called me to your aid, I came, pleased at the idea of serving an old friend, but with the vaguest possible recollection of the pretty little girl I had seen running after butterflies at Henley. I came, and I found my little butterfly-huntress transformed into a fair and loving creature, whose unselfish nature was revealed in every look and thought. For a long time I had no thought, no consciousness of such a thought, except the honest desire to help you, to the best of my power, in the difficult career you had chosen for yourself. How shall I tell you at what moment this friendly interest grew into a warmer feeling, when I cannot explain the change to myself? I only know that I love you; and that if I were free, as I am not, I should sigh for no sweeter home than one to which you would welcome me.” For a few moments he paused, looking fondly at the sweet blushing face, downcast eyelids heavy with tears, and then went on steadily: