Gower stoops and reads the title of the book that had come between him and the thoughts of his beloved. He reads it aloud, slowly and with grim meaning--"_Notes on Tasmanian Cattle!_ It sounds enthralling," he says, with bitter irony. "Yes, doesn't it," says Miss Blount, with such unbounded audacity, and with such a charming laugh as instantly scatters all clouds. "You must know I adore cattle, especially Tasmanian cattle." As a mere matter of fact she had brought out this book by mistake, thinking it was one of George Eliot's, because of its cover, and had not opened it until now. "Come and sit here beside me," she says, sweetly, bent on making up for her former ungraciousness, "I have been so dull all the morning, and you wouldn't come and talk to me. So unfeeling of you." "Much you care whether I come to talk to you or not," says Mr. Gower, with a last foolish attempt at temper. This foolish attempt makes Miss Blount at once aware that the day is her own. "You may sit on the edge of my gown," she says, generously--she herself is sitting on a garden-chair made for one that carefully preserves her from all damp arising from the damp, wintry grass; "on the _very_ edge, please. Yes, just there," shaking out her skirts; "I can't bear people close to me, it gives me a creepy-creepy feel. Do you know it?" Mr. Gower shakes his head emphatically. No, he does not know the creepy-creepy feel. "Besides," goes on Dulce, confidentially, "one can see the person one is conversing with so much better at a little distance. Don't you agree with me?" "Don't I always agree with you?" says Mr. Gower, gloomily. "Well, then, don't look so discontented, it makes me think you are only answering me as you think I want to be answered, and no woman could stand that." Silence. The short day is already coming to a close. A bitter wind has sprung from the East and is now flitting with icy ardor over the grass and streamlet; through the bare branches of the trees, too, it flies, creating music of a mournful kind as it rushes onward. "Last night I dreamt of you," says Stephen, at last. "And what of me?" asks she, bending slightly down over him, as he lies at her feet in his favorite position. "This one great thing: I dreamt that you loved me. I flattered myself in my dreams, did I not?" says Gower, with an affectation of unconcern that does not disguise the fear that is consuming him lest some day he shall prove his dream untrue. "Now what is love, I will thee tell, It is the fountain and the well Where pleasure and repentance dwell," quotes she, gaily, with a quick, trembling blush.