She smiles coquettishly, and glances at Shadwell from under her long dark lashes. He is near enough to hear and understand; so is Luttrell. With a suppressed curse the latter grinds his heel into the innocent gravel and departs. CHAPTER XVI. "Love is hurt with jar and fret, Love is made a vague regret, Eyes with idle tears are wet." --_The Miller's Daughter._ It is evening; the shadows are swiftly gathering. Already the dusk--sure herald of night--is here. Above in the trees the birds are crooning their last faint songs and ruffling their feathers on their night-perches. How short the days have grown! Even into the very morning of sweet September there has fallen a breath of winter,--a chill, cold breath that tells us summer lies behind. Luttrell, with downcast eyes and embittered heart, tramples through the same green wood (now, alas, fuller of fallen leaves) where first, at Herst, he and Molly re-met. With a temperament as warm but less hopeful than hers, he sees the imaginary end that lies before him and his beloved. She has forsaken him, she is the bride of another,--that other is Shadwell. She is happy with him. This last thought, strange to say, is the unkindest cut of all. He has within his hand a stout stick he took from a tree as he walked along; at this point of the proceeding he breaks it in two and flings it to one side. Happy! away from him, with perhaps only a jesting recollection of all the sweet words, the tender thoughts he has bestowed upon her! The thought is agony; and, if so, what will the reality be? At all events he need not witness it. He will throw up his commission, and go abroad,--that universal refuge for broken hearts; though why we must intrude our griefs and low spirits and general unpleasantnesses upon our foreign neighbors is a subject not yet sufficiently canvassed. It seems so unkind toward our foreign neighbors. A rather shaky but consequently picturesque bridge stretches across a little stream that slowly, lovingly babbles through this part of the wood. Leaning upon its parapet, Luttrell gives himself up a prey to gloomiest forebodings, and with the utmost industry calls up before him all the most miserable possibilities. He has reached the verge of suicide,--in a moment more (in his "mind's eye") he will be over, when a delicious voice behind him says, demurely: "May I pass, please?" It is Molly: such a lovely Molly!--such a naughty unrepentant, winsome Molly, with the daintiest and widest of straw hats, twined with wild flowers, thrown somewhat recklessly toward the back of her head. "I am sorry to disturb you," says this apparition, gazing at him unflinchingly with big, innocent eyes, "but I do not think there is room on this bridge for two to pass."