'She laughed, but became silent, and glanced at me shyly under her long lashes--shyly, and yet at times I thought half invitingly, half defiantly, too. Was the girl acting or not? I felt inclined to love her one moment, and simply and selfishly to amuse myself with her the next, heedless, perhaps, of whether the poor girl might learn to love me or not. 'I was a young fellow then, Falconer--save in experience, I am not an old fellow yet--but she was younger still, a very girl, on the borders between childhood and womanhood, the "sweet seventeen" of the inevitable love story. I was playing with fire, and so was she; and in teaching her to love me, I forgot all about an entanglement elsewhere, and gave myself up to the romance and intoxication of the time and the episode. So we met and dreamed on day by day, and she was so brilliantly happy that her soft face at times seemed to be singularly brightened by the very gladness of her heart; for it seems so natural for a young girl to mingle something of idolatry with her first love. 'It did occur to me that our love--hers, at least--was somewhat of the rash and romantic Romeo and Juliet, passionate and unreasoning kind; while she was as young and innocent as I was exacting, and even suspicious that she was perfectly artless. I pondered over the words of Shakespeare: "Love sought is good; but given unsought is better;" and I was cynic, casuist, and egotist enough to doubt this. 'When I kissed her, it seemed each time as if all my soul went out to her with that kiss; and yet--what idiosyncrasy of the heart was it that made me wish to have that kiss recalled! '"I seem to have no wish or desire in the world ungratified," she whispered to me, as she nestled her head on my shoulder, while the boat drifted with the current under the tremulous shade of the silver birches, and the Tay rippled placidly past them. '"You are so happy, Annabelle?" '"I never thought to be so happy as I am now, Leslie; I could even die with your arms round me! But--but are you satisfied to have such an ignorant little girl for your wife?" '_Wife_! I had not proposed yet; and the word roused me to a selfish consciousness of the rashness of the whole affair, and so instead of replying I gave her a tender caress, and said: '"You are too good for me, Annabelle!" '"I can scarcely believe it--you so handsome, so rich--a captain of Lancers, and all that! Oh, Leslie, God forbid you should ever cease to love me less than you do!" 'This crisis in my river-cruising roused me to think of what I was about; and still more was I roused when at the barracks I found a letter from Lord Rothiemay awaiting me with an invitation to spend a few days at his place. But to leave my troop then was impossible, thus I wrote thanking his lordship, and proposing simply to gallop over on an evening named to dinner, and as I despatched the missive, the face and figure of his daughter Blanche came reproachfully before me.