“I cannot do either,” she said, with an indifference that he never dreamed was imitation. “I have no butler, for one thing, and I don’t mean to die if I can help it.” “My dear little lady, I didn’t mean that.” “Didn’t you? I do! I have a horror of dying.” She shivered suddenly, as if neither the afternoon nor the quick blood in her veins could warm her. “To die, and be put in the cold, damp earth, and not even know the sun shone over your grave! I often think of it, just because it terrifies me.” “You have all your life to live first,” he said, with a wandering glance at her. She piqued him with her changes of mood. “Life is very amusing,” she observed calmly. “You see so much you are not meant to see. Now I saw why you kissed me just now.” Mr. Cylmer’s bronzed cheek showed a faint trace of red. “I was an ungentlemanly beast,” he cried hotly. “Be kind and let us forget it.” Ismay looked at him, and once more her beauty startled him. “Forget it, by all means--if you can!” she retorted. “But I don’t think you will. Good-by, I am going home now.” And before he could speak she had slipped through a gap in the hedge, which, she had seen as he came, led by a short cut to Marchant’s Hold. “But you haven’t even told me your name, or how you know mine, or where you live,” Mr. Cylmer spoke to the empty air apparently, but a light laugh, sweet as spring, answered him from the other side of the hedge. “You can find out all those things by diligence,” returned a voice full of mockery. Mr. Cylmer scrambled hastily through the gap in the hedge, reins in hand, and his horse’s head pushing through behind him. “You’d better tell me,” he observed calmly. “I might tell, you know, how you went to see the world one night.” “Ah, but you won’t!” She was suddenly radiant, suddenly conscious that nothing on earth would have bound him to her like that kiss. “You have too much honor, Mr. Cylmer. Now, I have no honor at all. I could tell my mother that you spoke to me without any introduction.” He laughed, his eyes very sweet and kindly, as he said: “You won’t, will you?” “No,” she answered slowly, “and if you ever meet me it must be for the first time. You won’t stammer and be surprised or anything, will you?” “No, I think I can promise you that,” he said bluntly. “Only let me see you; it was chaff, you know, about my telling tales.” The girl looked at him with hard scrutiny, and as he met her eyes he could have cut his hand off for this morning’s work. For her face was strangely innocent, and pitifully young to be that of a girl who was allowed to wander about by herself to a music-hall. “My dear little lady,” he said slowly, “do you know that I can never forgive myself? I don’t deserve your ever speaking to me or trusting me again. And yet, I ask you to let me be your friend. Will you?”