When, the next day, at noon, they strolled out upon the lawn, the lilies were lying there, their waxen petals browning and withering in the hot sun. Georgie stooped, and picked one up. “What a pity!” she said. “They would have been so pretty to-day. I wonder who gathered them.” Lisbeth regarded the poor little brown bud with a queer smile. “I gathered them,” she said. “It does seem a pity, too--almost cruel, doesn’t it? But that is always the way with people. They gather their buds first, and sympathize with them afterward.” Then she held out her hand. “Give it to me,” she said; and when Georgie handed the wilted thing to her, she took it, still half smiling in that queer way. “Yes,” she commented. “It might have been very sweet to-day. It was useless cruelty to kill it so early. It will never be a flower now. You see, Georgie, my dear,” dryly, “how I pity my bud--afterward! Draw a moral from me, and never gather your flowers too soon. They might be very sweet to-morrow.” She had not often talked in this light, satirical way of late, but Georgie observed that she began to fall into the habit again after this. She had odd moods, and was not quite so frank as her young admirer liked to see her. And something else struck Georgie as peculiar, too. She found herself left alone with Hector much oftener. In their walks, and sails, and saunterings in the garden, Lisbeth’s joining them became the exception, instead of the rule, as it had been heretofore. It seemed always by chance that she failed to accompany them, but it came to the same thing in the end. Georgie pondered over the matter in private, with much anxiety. She really began to feel as if something strange had happened. Had there been a new quarrel? Hector was more fitful and moody than ever. Sometimes he looked so miserable and pale, that she was a little frightened. When he talked, he was bitter; and when he was silent, his silence was tragical. But he was as fond of her as ever he had been. Nay, he even seemed fonder of her, and more anxious to be near her, at all times. “I am not a very amusing companion, Georgie, my dear,” he would say, “but you will bear with me, I know. You are my hope and safeguard, Georgie. If you would not bear with me, who would?” She often wondered at his way of speaking of her, as his safeguard. Indeed, he not only called her his safeguard, but showed, by his manner, that he flew to her as a sort of refuge. Once, when they had been sitting together in silence; for some time, he suddenly seized her hand, and kissed it passionately and desperately. “Georgie,” he said, “if I were to come to you some day and ask you to save me from a great danger, would you try to do as I asked you?” She did not draw her hand away, but let it rest in his, as she answered him, with a quiet, half-sad smile: