"There," she said; "it is a beauty. They speak of the roses of Florence, but give me an English rose, Florentine roses are fuller than these, but not so beautiful--oh, not so beautiful! There," and she held it out to him, without looking at him. If she had done so, she would have surely read something in the white constrained face, and small, glittering eyes that would have warned her. He took it without a word. In simple truth he was trying to restrain himself. He felt that the time was not ripe for action--that a word of the devouring passion which consumed him would be dangerous, and he whispered to himself, "Not yet! not yet!" But her loveliness, that touch of the rose to his face, overmastered his cool, calculating spirit. "Thank you," he said at last; "thank you very much. I shall value it dearly. I shall put it on my desk in my dark, grim room, and think of you." Then Stella looked up and started slightly. "Oh!" she said, hurriedly. "You would like some more perhaps? Pray take what you would like," and she held out the knife, and looked upon him with a sudden coldness in the eyes that should have warned him. "No, I want no more," he said. "All the roses that ever bloomed would not add to my pleasure. It is this rose from your hand that I value." Stella made a slight movement toward the window, but he put out his hand. "Stay one moment--only a moment," he said, and in his eagerness he put out his hand and touched her arm, the arm sacred to Leycester. Stella shrank back, and a little shudder swept through her. "What--what is it!" she asked, in a low voice that she tried to make calm and cold and repressive. He stood, shutting and opening the knife with a nervous restlessness, as unlike his calm impassability as the streaming torrent that forces its way through the mountain gorge is like the lake at their feet; his eyes fixed on her face with anxious eagerness. "I want to speak to you," he said. "Only a few words--a very few words. Will you listen to me? I hope you will listen to me." Stella stood, her face turned away from him, her heart beating, but coldly and with fear and repugnance, not as it had beat when Leycester's low tones first fell upon her ear. He moistened his lips again, and his hand closed over the shut knife with a tight clasp, as if he were striving to regain self-command. "I know it is unwise. I feel that--that you would rather not listen to me, and that I shall do very little good by speaking, but I cannot. There are times, Stella----" Stella moved slightly at the familiar name. "There are times when a man loses self-control, when he flings prudence to the winds, or rather, lets it slip from him. This is one of those moments, Stella--Miss Etheridge; I feel that I must speak, let it cost me what it may." Still silent, she stood as if turned to stone. He put his hand to his brow--his white, thin hand, with its carefully trimmed nails--and wiped away the perspiration that stood in big beads.