"Don't be long, Brian! don't be _long_!" she had sobbed, with deep entreaty, and with such a tender passion as had shaken all her slender frame. So they had "kissed and kissed," and parted. And Desmond, though sad as man may be at the thought that he should look upon her face no more for four long weeks, still left her with a gladder heart than he had ever known. Her tears were sweet to him, and in her grief he found solace for his own. And, indeed, as the days flew by, they found the pain of absence was checkered by dreams of the reunion that lay before them; and each day, as it was born, and grew, and died, and so was laid upon the pile of those already gone, was a sad joy to them, and counted not so much a day lost as one gained. "We take no note of time but from its loss." This loss in the present instance was most sweet to Monica and her lover. To them Time was the name of a slow and cruel monster, whose death was to be desired. And now the monster is slain, and to-day Brian will return to Coole. A few lines full of joyful love and glad expectancy had been brought to her yesterday by the sympathetic Bridget, who affected an ignorance about the whole matter that utterly imposed on Monica, who would have found a bitterness in sharing her heart's secret with her maid. Yet Bridget knows quite as much about it as she does. To Kit alone has Monica unburdened her soul, and talked, and talked, and talked, on her one fond topic, without discovering the faintest symptom of fatigue in that indefatigable person. Yes, to-day he comes! Monica had risen with the lark, unable to lie abed with the completion of a sweet desire lying but a few short hours away from her, and had gone through the morning and afternoon in a dreamy state of tender anticipation. Yet surely not short, but of a terrible length, are these hours. Never has the old clock ticked with such maddening deliberation; yet-- "Be the day weary, or never so long, At length it ringeth to evensong;" and at last the old clock, tick it never so slowly, must bring round the hour when she may go down to the river to meet her love again. But the relentless Fates are against her, and who shall interfere with their woven threads? As though some vile imp of their court had whispered in Miss Priscilla's ear the whole story of her forbidden attachment, she keeps Monica in the morning-room with her, copying out certain recipes of a dry nature, that could have been copied just as well to-morrow, or next year, or _never_. As the hour in which she ought to meet her lover comes and goes by, the poor child's pulses throb and her heart beats violently. Kit has gone to the village, and so cannot help her. All seems lost. Her eyes grow large and dark with repressed longing, her hand trembles. "There, that will do, dear child; thank you," says Miss Priscilla, gratefully, folding up the obnoxious papers and slipping them into the davenport.