Then, as the last words dropt hurriedly from her lips, he took her in his arms and kissed her. "Now we are betrothed, Stella, you and I against all the world." As he spoke a cloud sailed across the moon, and the shadows now at their feet suddenly changed from silver to dullish lead. Stella shuddered in his arms, and clung to him with a little convulsive movement that thrilled him. "Let us go," she said; "let us go. It seems almost as if there were spirits here! How dark it is!" "Only for a moment, darling!" he said. "See?" and he took her face and turned it to the moonlight again. "One kiss, and we will go." With no blush on her face, but with a glow of passionate love in her eyes, she raised her face, looked into his for a moment, then kissed him. Then they turned, and went toward the boat; but this time she clung to his arm, and her head nestled on his shoulder. As they turned, something white and ghost-like moved from behind the trees, in front of which they had been standing. It stood in the moonlight looking after them, itself so white and eerie that it might have been one of the good fairies; but that in its face--beautiful enough for any fairy--there glittered the white, angry, threatening look of an evil spirit. Was it the nearness of this exquisitely-graceful figure in white which by some instinct Stella had felt and been alarmed at? The figure watched them for a moment until they were out of sight, then it turned and struck into a path leading toward the Hall. As it did so, another figure--a black one this time--came out of the shadow, and crossed the path obliquely. She turned and saw a white, not unhandsome, face, with small keen eyes bent on her. She, the watcher, had been watched. For a moment she stood as if half-tempted to speak, but the next drew the fleecy shawl round her head with a gesture of almost insolent hauteur. But she was not to escape so easily; the dark, thin figure slipped back, and stooping down picked up the handkerchief, which in her sweeping gesture she had let drop. "Pardon!" he said. She looked at him with cool disdain, then took the handkerchief, and with an inclination of her head that was scarcely a bow would have passed on again, but he did not move from her path, and hat in hand stood looking at her. Proud, fearless, imperiously haughty as she was, she felt constrained to stop. He knew by the mere fact of her stopping that he had impressed her, and he at once followed up the advantage gained. If she had wanted to pass him without speaking she should have taken no notice of the handkerchief, and gone on her way. No doubt she now wished that she had done so, but it was too late now. "Will you permit me to speak to you?" he said, in a quiet, almost a constrained voice, every word distinct, every word full of significance. She looked at him, at the pale face with its thin, resolute lips and small, keen eyes, and inclined her head.