"No, no," she said, with a smile; "not that." "That I were a Mr. Wyndward----" "With no castle," she broke in. "Ah, if that could be! If you were only, say, a workman! How good that would be! Think! you would live in a little cottage, and you would go to work, and come home at night, and I should be waiting for you with your tea--do they have tea or dinner?" she broke off to inquire, with a laugh. "You see," he said, returning her laugh, "it would not do. Why, Stella, you were not made for a workman's wife; the sordid cares of poverty are for different natures to yours. And yet we should be happy, we two." And he sighed wistfully. "You would be glad to see me come home, Stella?" "Yes," she said, half seriously, half archly. "I have seen them in Italy, the peasants' wives, standing at the cottage doors, the hot sunset lighting up their faces and their colored kerchiefs, waiting for their husbands, and watching them as they climbed the hills from the pastures and the vineyards, and they have looked so happy that I--I have envied them. I was not happy in Italy, you know." "My Stella!" he murmured. His love for her was so deep and passionate, his sympathy so keen that half phrases were as plainly understood by him as if she had spoken for hours. "And so you would wait for me at some cottage door?" he said. "Well, it shall be so. I will leave England, if you like--leave the castle and take some little ivy-green cottage." She smiled, and shook her head. "Then they would have reason to complain," she said; "they would say 'she has dragged him down to her level--she has taught him to forget all the duties of his rank and high position--she has'--what is it Tennyson says--'robbed him of all the uses of life, and left him worthless.'" Lord Leycester looked up at the exquisite face with a new light of admiration. This was no mere pretty doll, no mere bread-and-butter school-girl to whom he had given his love, but a girl who thought, and who could express her thoughts. "Stella!" he murmured, "you almost frighten me with your wisdom. Where did you learn such experience? Well, it is not to be a cottage, then; and I am not to work in the fields or tend the sheep. What then remains? Nothing, save that you take your proper place in the world as my wife;" the indescribable tenderness with which he whispered the last word brought the warm blood to her face. "Where should I find a lovelier face to add to the line of portraits in the old hall? Where should I find a more graceful form to stand by my side and welcome my guests? Where a more 'gracious ladye' than the maiden I love?" "Oh, hush! hush!" whispered Stella, her heart beating beneath the exquisite pleasure of his words, and the gently passionate voice in which they were spoken. "I am nothing but a simple, stupid girl, who knows nothing except----" she stopped. "Except!" he pressed her. She looked at the water a moment, then she bent down, and lightly touched his hand with her lips.