By this time it is nearly five o'clock, and as yet oppressively warm. The evening is coming with a determination to rival in dull heat the early part of the day. The sheep in great white snowy patches lie panting in the distant corners of the adjoining fields; the cows, tired of whisking their foolish tails in an unsuccessful war with the insatiable flies, are all huddled together, and give way to mournful lows that reproach the tarrying milkmaid. Above in the branches a tiny bird essays to sing, but stops half stifled, and, forgetting the tuneful note, contents itself with a lazy "cluck-cluck" that presently degenerates still further into a dying "coo" that is hardly musical, because so full of sleep. Molly has seated herself upon the soft young grass, beneath the shade of a mighty beech, against the friendly trunk of which she leans her back. Even this short walk from the house to the six stately beeches that are the pride and glory of Brooklyn has told upon her. Her usually merry eyes have subsided into a gentle languor; over them the white lids droop heavily. No little faintest tinge of color adorns her pale cheeks; upon her lap her hands lie idle, their very listlessness betokening the want of energy they feel. At about two yards' distance from her reclines her guest, full length, his fingers interlaced behind his head, looking longer, slighter than usual, as with eyes upturned he gazes in silence upon the far-off, never-changing blue showing through the net-work of the leaves above him. "Are you quite used up?" asks Molly, in the slow, indifferent tone that belongs to heat, as the crisp, gay voice belongs to cold. "I never heard you silent for so long before. Do you think you are likely to _die_? Because--don't do it here, please: it would give me such a shock." "I am far more afraid I shall live," replies her companion. "Oh, how I loathe the summer!" "You are not so far gone as I feared: you can still use bad language. Now, tell me what sweet thought has held you in thrall so long." "If I must confess it, I have been thinking of how untold a luxury at this moment would be an iced bath." "'An iced bath'!" With as much contempt as she can summon. "How prosaic! And I quite flattered myself you were thinking of me." She says this as calmly as though she had supposed him thinking of his dinner. Tedcastle's lips part in a faint smile, a mere glimmer,--a _laugh_ is beyond him,--and he turns his head just so far round as will permit his eyes to fall full upon her face. "I fancied such thoughts on my part tabooed," he says. "And besides, would they be of any advantage to you?" "No material advantage, but they would have been only fair. _I_ was thinking of _you_." "Were you? Really!" With such overpowering interest as induces him to raise himself on his elbow, the better to see her. "You were thinking--that----"