After the wonderful interview by the cairn, where he had shown that, although past the boy-lover period, he was ready to cast all consideration for rank and riches to the winds for her sake, she had estimated him very differently. From his first words of love she shrunk with an agony she could not express, so certain was she that they must mean insult; but when his letter told her the depth and sincerity of his affection, and she listened to the magic of his earnest pleading, she felt bewildered and almost frightened at the ardor of the feeling she had evoked. She could not quite believe him. She trembled at the idea of his hurrying into the irrevocable, which he might afterward regret; and the more she felt her heart inclined to yield, the more resolutely she held to her determination, for both their sakes, to test the reality of his affection. But when he was gone, when she was left alone with the memory of his persuasive voice--of his bold brown eyes, softened into tenderness--of the passion which glowed through the earnest respect of his manner--whatever of indifference she had felt or assumed in their interview fast faded away, or rather warmed into real interest, and trembling, half-fearful liking. Then the question of his constancy assumed an absorbing importance. The perpetual struggle in her mind to resist the delightful suggestions of hope kept the subject constantly before her; and the bitterest trial she had ever known was the gradual fading away of the hopes that had formed themselves in spite of her, when week after week slipped past and no tidings reached her from Ralph Wilton. Of course he knew that she must leave Brosedale, and must also know that under no circumstances would she take the first step toward the renewal of their intercourse.