She was musing on the beauty and the sorrow of this lovely hapless land, and the famous words of Byron came aptly to her lips. She repeated them softly and sadly, and someone who had stolen upon her unaware answered musingly: "Do you believe with Byron that the gift of beauty is always fatal, Miss Berlin?" She started and flushed with annoyance. It was Julius Revington. He had become her very shadow, seeming unable to exist out of her sight. The beautiful girl in her white dress with the roses and myrtles in her small hand, turned her face away pettishly. "How you startled me, Mr. Revington," she said, in a tone of displeasure. "I thought myself alone." "You are very cruel to hide yourself out here in the orange ground," said the gentleman, sentimentally. "Do you know that I have been searching for you everywhere?" "No, I did not know it. If I had, I should have hidden myself in a securer place than this," she replied, with all the frank cruelty of a young girl. "Miss Berlin, you are very cruel," complained the lover. "Sometimes I really wonder whether you say such sharp things in earnest, or if you are only coquetting." The blue eyes flashed. "I know nothing of coquetry," said Irene, sharply. "I mean everything that I say." He came nearer and looked under the brim of the shady hat at the lovely, irritated face and sparkling eyes. "Oh, Miss Berlin, why will you treat me so coldly when you know that I love the very ground you walk upon?" he exclaimed, almost abjectly. "I do not want your love," she answered, stamping her little foot impatiently on the turf, as if the love he confessed for her lay veritably beneath her feet. His weakly, handsome face grew pale at her impetuous words. "Wait, Irene, before you so cruelly reject me," he exclaimed. "You are young, but not too young to know that it is wrong to trifle with the human heart." "I have not trifled with yours," she interrupted, flushing at the imputation. "But all the same your beauty has wiled my heart from me," he said. "I have loved you from the first hour I saw your charming face. I lay my heart, my hand, my fortune at your feet, Irene. Will you not take pity on me and be my wife?" The flowers fell from her hands down upon the sweet, green turf, and her face grew pale with emotion. It was the first time a lover had ever wooed her, yet she was a wife--a wife unwooed and unwon--yet bound, how plainly she recalled the solemn, fateful words, by ties that no man "should put asunder." She looked at the dark, handsome face that showed at its best with that light of love lingering on it. Between her and it another face arose, languid, careless, indifferent, yet fascinating for the soul that looked out of the bright, yet soft brown eyes. She remembered that she had thought him handsome--handsomer than any of Bertha's and Elaine's beaux--a flush rose slowly to her face as she remembered that she had told him so.