"Yet perhaps you think----Don't kiss me just to oblige me, you know. I don't care so much about it as all _that_, but----" She finds it impossible to finish the sentence, because---- * * * * * Dexterously, but gently, she draws herself away from him, and stands a little apart. Looking at her, he can see she is troubled. He has opened his lips to speak, but by a gesture she restrains him. "I know it now," she says. This oracular speech is accompanied by a blush, vivid as it is angry, and there are large tears in her eyes. "I should not have asked _you_ to kiss _me_. That was your part, and you have taught me that I usurped it. Yet I thought only that I was fond of you, that you were my friend, or like Terry, or--" here the grievance gains sound, "you _should_ not have kissed me like that." "You didn't suppose I was going to kiss you as Terry might?" asks he, with just indignation. "He is your brother; I am--not." "I don't know anything about it, except this, that it will be a very long time before you have the chance of doing it again. I can't bear being _hugged_." "I am very sorry," says Mr. Desmond, stiffly. "Let me assure you, however, that I shall never cause you such offence again until you wish it." "Then say never at once," says Monica, with a pout. "Very good," says Desmond. It may now be reasonably supposed that he has met all her requirements, and that she has no further complaints to bring forward; but such is not the case. "I don't like you when you talk to me like that," she says, aggressively, and with a spoiled-child air, glancing at him from under her sweeping lashes. "How am I to talk to you, then?" asks he, in despair. "You know very well how to talk to Miss Fitzgerald," retorts she, provokingly, and with a bold attempt at a frown. Yet there is something about her naughty little face, a hidden, mocking, mischievous, yet withal friendly smile as it were, that disarms her speech of its sting and gives Brian renewed hope and courage. He takes her hand deliberately and draws it unrepulsed through his arm. "Let us go up this walk," he says, "and leave all angry words and thoughts behind us." He makes a movement in the direction indicated, and finds that she moves with him. He finds, too, that her slender fingers have closed involuntarily upon his arm. Plainly, she is as glad to be at peace with him as he with her. Coming to a turn in the path, shaded by two rugged old apple-trees now growing heavy with their green burden, Desmond stands still, and, putting his right hand in his pocket, draws out something from it. As he does this he colors slightly. "You wear all your rings on your right hand," he says, with loving awkwardness, "and it seems to me the other poor little fingers always look neglected. I--I wish you would take this and make it a present to your left hand." "_This_" is a thick gold band, set with three large diamonds of great brilliancy in gypsy fashion.