For fully two minutes, she gathered her flowers in silence, while Anstruthers waited, and looked at her; but at last she stood upright, and their eyes met. “It is a beautiful night,” she remarked, sententiously. “Yes.” “We have had a great number of lovely nights, lately.” “Yes.” She busied herself with her roses for a little while, to the exclusion of everything else, and then she gave it up. “Well,” she said, “suppose we go into the house. I can do nothing with them here. The fact is, I don’t know why I gathered them, unless it was from an impulse of destructiveness. Let us go.” “Stop a moment,” he said; nay, almost commanded her. She paused, not seeming in the least disturbed, however. She would have cut off her right hand, almost, before she would have exhibited an emotion. “I had a reason of my own for coming here,” he went on, “apart from Miss Clarissa’s commands. I want to bid you good-by.” “You must be going,” she commented, “very early in the morning.” And yet her heart was beating like a trip-hammer. “It is not that,” was his reply, “though I am going early. I had a whim--you remember my whim about the song--a fancy that I should like to say my good-by here, where I said a good-by once before.” “It is easily said,” answered Lisbeth, and held out one of her hands. “Good-by.” He took it, with a pretense at a coolness as masterly as her own, but he could not keep it up. He gave way to some swift, passionate, inexplicable prompting, and in an instant had covered it with kisses, had even fiercely kissed her slender wrist. She snatched it from his grasp, breathless with anger, forgetting her resolve to control herself. “What do you mean?” she cried. “You are mad. How dare you?” He drew back a step, confronting her defiantly. “I do not know what I mean,” he answered, “unless, as you say, I am mad. I think I am mad; so, being a madman, I will not ask you to pardon me. It was a farewell. It is over now, however. Will you let me take your roses, and carry them to the house?” She vouchsafed him no answer, but turned away, and left him to follow, if he chose. Her helplessness against him drove her fairly wild. Nothing she could say, or do, would ever wipe out the memory of those mad kisses. He either loved or despised her utterly; and remembering his manner toward Georgie, she could only conclude that he despised her, and had offered her a deadly insult. The blood shot into her cheeks, like a rush of fire, and her eyes blazed ominously. “My dear Lisbeth,” bleated good little Miss Clarissa, the moment she saw her, “you have caught fresh cold, I am convinced. You are in a high fever.” Fever, indeed! She had never been in such a fever in her life; but it was a fever of anger and humiliation. “I think it probable,” she said, seriously, “that I am going to have measles, or scarlatina, Aunt Clarissa. Which would you prefer?”