"Nor shall you," returns he, straining her to his heart with passionate tenderness. "My life is yours, to do what you will with it. And somehow all day long I knew (and was happy in the knowledge, forgive me that) that you were lonely for want of me; but I could not come to you, my soul, until this very moment. Yet, believe me, I suffered more than you during our long separation." (If any one laughs here, it will prove he has never been in love, and so is an object of pity. This should check untimely mirth.) "You felt it long too, then?" says Monica, hopefully. "How can you ask me that? Your darling face was never once out of my mind, and yet I _could_ not come to you. I had so many things to do, so many people to see, and then the poor old fellow was so ill. But have we not cause to be thankful?--at last the breach between our houses is healed, and we may tell all the world of our love." "You should have heard Aunt Priscilla, how she talked of you when she came back to-day from Coole," says Monica, in a little fervent glow of enthusiasm. "It was beautiful! You know she must have _understood_ you all along to be able to say the truth of you so well. She said so much in your favor that she satisfied even me." She says this with such a graceful _naivete_, and such an utter belief in his superiority to the vast majority of men, that Mr. Desmond does well to feel the pride that surges in his heart. "I really think she has fallen in love with you," says Miss Beresford, at the last, with a little gay laugh. "Perhaps that is why she refused the squire," says Brian; and then he basely betrays trust, by telling her all that tale of the late wooing of Miss Priscilla, and its result, which awakens in the breast of that ancient lady's niece a mirth as undutiful as it is prolonged. "And what were you doing all day?" she says, when it has somewhat subsided. "Trying to keep my uncle--did I tell you he has fallen in love with your photograph?--from talking himself into a brain fever, and I was swearing hard, and----" "_Brian!_" "Only informations, darling! And I wouldn't have done that either, only I had to. They made me. Lay the blame on '_they_.' It wasn't my fault, indeed. If I had thought for a moment you had the slightest objection to that sort of----" "Nonsense! don't be silly; go on," says Miss Beresford, austerely. "Well, then, I listened patiently to a good deal of raving from Kelly on the subject of Hermia Herrick. I don't suppose I should have exhibited as much patience as I did, but for the fact that I was waiting on George--my uncle--at the time, and couldn't get away. And after that I listened with even more patience to a perfect farrago of nonsense from our sub-inspector about the would-be assassin we have caught, and his fellows; and, besides all this, I thought of _you_ every moment since last I saw you." "_Every_ moment. Not _one_ neglected?" asks she, smiling. "I'll swear to that too, if you like. I'm in good practice now."