Her hair is rolled up in a small, soft knot behind; her face is a little pale; her eyes, large and luminous, have great heavy shadows lying beneath them, suggestive of fatigue and tiring thought. Altogether, she is looking as lovely as any heart can desire. "Ah, you have returned!" she says, as Kit enters. "How long you have been! I gave you up. I thought some pixy had become enamoured of you and had carried you off to his kingdom." "I was in danger of nothing so insignificant as a pixy. It was the great Apollo's self I feared," says Kit, with a sly humorous smile. "And here is your lily: _he_ sent it to you with his love and a kiss." "Apollo?" smiling. "Why, yes. Who else could it be at this hour?" "Yet there is something strange in your manner." "That is as it should be. On such a night as this, how could one escape a little touch of that 'moonstruck madness' I spoke of a while since? Go out yourself, walk through that moonlit garden just where I walked, to where in that corner over the rays melt into shadow, and try if there be nothing in it to make your heart beat faster." "I could do it, and return calm as I am now." "Then you are no true woman." "What! must a woman be so foolishly romantic as to tremble in the moonlight, to be true?" "Moonlights differ. There is a witchery abroad to-night. Go, and judge for yourself if there be not truth in my words." "I can see enough of it from this," says Monica, leaning her bare snowy arms--from which her loose sleeves have fallen--upon the window-ledge, and turning her eyes to the pale sky studded with bright stars, "to bewitch me, if indeed it has the power you ascribe to it." Foiled in her first effort to send her to Desmond's arms, Kit flings herself upon the ground beside her, and lays her arms upon her lap and looks lovingly but reproachfully into her eyes. "I think you were a little unkind to that dear Brian this evening," she says. "That dear Brian will recover from my cruel treatment, I make no doubt," says Monica, with affected lightness, though, in truth, remorse is gnawing at her heartstrings. "If he does, he will show his very good sense. He loves you: why, then, do you _flout_ and scorn him?" In the ancient library below, the young ladies in the novels always _flouted_ their lovers. Not having the faintest idea how they perform this arduous task, Kit still adopts the word as having a sonorous sound, and uses it now with--as she hopes--great effect. "I do _not_ flout him," says Monica, indignantly. "But what am I to do? am I to make Aunt Priscilla wretched, then, because of him, and break her poor heart perhaps?"