Her colour deepened, and there was almost a divine expression about her eyes and lips; but she became covered with intense confusion when Trevelyan approached her suddenly, and said with a tender and pleasantly modulated voice-- "Your floral spell has worked to admiration, for Audley does love you truly and fondly, dearest Sybil!" "Oh, Mr. Trevelyan--and you have overheard my folly!" was all she could falter out, as he captured her hands in his own, and she stooped her face aside. "_Mr._ Trevelyan? Why, a moment ago you called me plain Audley, and it did sound so delightful! Pray do not let us go back in our relations. And you have quite recovered, I hope, from the effects of that frightful affair?" he added, while smiling with fondness into the clear bright eyes that drooped beneath his gaze. "It seems as nothing, now--save when I dream; you make too much of it--indeed you do," blundered Sybil. "Can I do so of aught in which you have a part?" "Poor mamma is still in a weak and nervous state; so, I am sorry to say, she will be unable to see you." As it was not "mamma" he had come exactly to visit, Audley could only murmur some well-bred expression of regret. "How very remarkable that you should have been there to save me!" said Sybil, after a pause. "The coldly treated stranger by the moorland tarn, eh?" "You forget that we had not been introduced, or how came it all to pass?" she asked, with growing confusion. "As all things in this life do, dearest Sybil." "But how?" "It was fate--destiny." "What--are you a fatalist?" "I hope not; and yet it were sweet to think that--that----" "What?" murmured Sybil, her long lashes drooping beneath the ardour of his glance, while his clasp seemed to tighten on her slender fingers. Much more passed that has been said, over and over again, under the same circumstances, by every pair of lovers since roses grew in Eden (and, unluckily, apples too); and there were long pauses, that were only pauses of the tongue, and which beatings of the heart filled up, with many a sigh "the deeper for suppression." There grew between these two a sudden sense of great trust which increased the tenderness of their sentiments, while deep gratitude was mingled now with Sybil's former budding love. It did seem to her, as if Fate had deliberately cast each in the path of the other; and doubtless it was so, for "out of these chance-affinities grow sometimes the passion of a life, and sometimes the disappointments that embitter existence." "Oh, Audley, without mamma's consent, dare I accept so lovely a ring?" said Sybil, in a low voice, as she lingered at the conservatory door and contemplated a jewel which Trevelyan had just slipped upon her engaged finger.