"Not half often enough," she says, and hardly knows why his face flushes at her words, being still ignorant of the fact that he loves her with a love that passeth the love of most. "Well, you sha'n't have to complain of that any longer," he says, gayly. "Shall I take up my residence here?" "Do," says Miss Peyton, also in jest. "I would much rather you took up yours at Scrope," he says, unthinkingly, and then he flushes again, and then silence falls between them. Her foot is tapping the sward lightly, yet nervously. Her eyes are on the "daisies pied." Presently, as though some inner feeling compels her to it, she says,--"Why do you never speak to me of--Horace?" "You forbade me," he says: "how could I disobey you? He is well, however, but, I think, not altogether happy. In his last letter, to me he still spoke remorsefully of--her." It is agony to him to say this, yet he does it bravely, knowing it will be the wisest thing for the woman he himself loves. "Yes," she says, quite calmly. At this instant she knows her love for Horace Branscombe is quite dead. "Her death was terrible." "Yet easy, I dare say. Disease of the heart, when it carries one off, is seldom painful. Clarissa, this is the very first time you have spoken of her, either." "Is it?" She turns away from him, and, catching a branch, takes from it a leaf or two. "You have not spoken to me," she says. "Because, as I said, you forbade me. Don't you know your word to me is law?" "I don't think I know much," says Miss Peyton, with a sad little smile; but she lets her hand lie in his, and does not turn away from him. "Horace is in Ceylon," she says presently. "Yes, and doing very well. Do you often think of him now?" "Very often. I am glad he is getting on successfully." "Have you forgotten nothing, Clarissa?" "I have forgotten a great deal. How could it be otherwise? I have forgotten that I ever loved any one. It seems to me now impossible that I could have felt all that I did two months ago. Yet something lingers with me,--something I cannot explain." She pauses, and looks idly down upon her white hands, the fingers of which are twining and intertwining nervously. "Do you mean that you have ceased to think of Horace in the light of a lover?" he asks, with an effort certainly, yet with determination. He will hear the truth now or never. "What! wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?" she says, turning to him with some passion; and then her anger fades, and her eyes fill with tears. "If you can apply such a word to him, your love must be indeed dead," he says, in a curious tone, and, raising one of her hands, he lays it upon his breast. "I wish it had never been born," she says, with a sigh, not looking at him. "But is it dead?" persists he, eagerly. "Quite. I buried it that day you took me--to his--rooms: you remember?" "How could I forget? Clarissa, if you are unhappy, so am I. Take pity upon me." "You unhappy?" She lifts her eyes to his.