On one side rise gray rocks, cold and dead, save for the little happy life that, springing up above, flows over them, leaping, laughing from crag to crag, bedewing leaf and blossom, and dashing its gem-like spray over all the lichens and velvet mosses and feathery ferns that grow luxuriantly to hide the rugged jags of stone. Here, at night, the owls delight to hoot, the bats go whirring past, the moonbeams surely cast their kindest rays; by day the pigeons coo from the topmost boughs their tales of love, while squirrels sit blinking merrily, or run their Silvios on their Derby days. Just now it is neither night nor garish day, but a soft, early twilight, and on the sward that glows as green as Erin's, sit Molly and her attendant slave. "The reason I like you," says Molly, reverting to something that has gone before, and tilting back her hat so that all her pretty face is laid bare to the envious sunshine, while the soft rippling locks on her forehead make advances to each other through the breeze, "the reason I like you,--no,"--seeing a tendency on his part to creep nearer, "no, stay where you are. I only said I liked you. If I had mentioned the word love, then indeed--but, as it is, it is far too warm to admit of any endearments." "You are right,--as you always are," says Luttrell, with suspicious amiability, being piqued. "You interrupted me," says Miss Massereene, leaning back comfortably and raising her exquisite eyes in lazy admiration of the green and leafy tangle far above her. "I was going to say that the reason I like you so much is because you look so young, quite as young as I do,--more so, indeed, I think." "It is a poor case," says Luttrell, "when a girl of nineteen looks older than a man of twenty-seven." "That is not the way to put it. It is a charming and novel case when a man of twenty-seven looks younger than a girl of nineteen." "How much younger?" asks Luttrell, who is still sufficiently youthful to have a hankering after mature age. "Am I fourteen or nine years old in your estimation?" "Don't let us dispute the point," says Molly, "and don't get cross. I see you are on for a hot argument, and I never could follow even a mild one. I think you young, and you should be glad of it, as it is the one good thing I see about you. As a rule I prefer dark men,--but for their unhappy knack of looking old from their cradles,--and have a perfect passion for black eyes, black skin, black locks, and a general appearance of fierceness! Indeed, I have always thought, up to this, that there was something about a fair man almost ridiculous. Have not you?" Here she brings her eyes back to the earth again, and fastens them upon him with the most engaging frankness. "No. I confess it never occurred to me before," returns Luttrell, coloring slightly through his Saxon skin.