"Then I suppose I had better dress myself all over again," she says, glancing with much discontent at the charming vision the glass returns to her. "No, no!" says Kit, decidedly. She has now arranged herself as Mistress of the Ceremonies, and quite gives herself airs. "Do not add even a touch to your toilet. You are quite too sweet as you are, and 'time presses'" (another quotation from one of her mouldy volumes). "But _this_," says Monica, plucking at her pretty loose gown, that hangs in limp artistic folds round her slight figure and is pranked out with costly laces. "It is perfect! Have you no eyes for the beautiful? There, go, you silly child; Nature has been so good to you, you now deride her prodigality, and make little of the gifts she has bestowed upon you. Go to----" "Good gracious!" says Monica, pausing to stare at her aghast. "Where did you learn all that?" "It is in a book below; I learned it by heart, to say it to you some day, and now I have done it. There, be quick! He will be _gone_ if you don't make haste. His patience by this time must be exhausted. Think what he has been enduring; I only hope he hasn't fainted from sheer fatigue, that's all!" "Will you stay here till I come back," says Monica, nervously, "or will you come with me?" "I shall stay here; and don't hurry on my account. I shall be quite happy with this lamp and your Chaucer. There, go now; and tell him I sent you. And," mischievously, "don't be civil to him, you know, but rate him soundly for presuming to disturb your worship at this hour." "Oh! if any one sees me!" says Monica, quaking. "You will never get hanged for a big crime," returns Kit, laughing; and then Monica steps out lightly, fearfully, upon the corridor outside, and so, with her heart dying within her, creeps past her aunt's doors, and down the wide staircase, and through the hall, and at last into the silver moonlight! CHAPTER XII. How Monica with faltering footsteps enters the mysterious moonlight, and how she fares therein. What a noise the tiny gravel makes beneath her feet, as she hurries rapidly towards the garden! How her heart beats! Oh that she were back again in her pretty safe room, with the naughty Kit to scold! Oh, if Aunt Priscilla were to rise, and, looking out of her bedroom window, catch a glimpse of her, as she hastes to meet the man she has been forbidden to know! A thousand terrors possess her. The soft beauty of the night is unseen, the rushing of sweet brooks in the distance is unheard. She hurries on, a little, lithe, frightened figure, with wide eyes and parted lips, to the rendezvous she has not sought. And what a little way it had seemed in the glad daylight, yet what a journey in the silent, fearsome night! There are real tears, born of sheer nervousness, in her beautiful eyes, as she runs along the garden path, and at last--_at last_--finds herself face to face with Desmond.