"I sent you that bouquet," I answered, "because I judged by your love of gardening that you were fond of flowers. The action was not designed as a rudeness. It was a mere neighbourly act"---- She seemed too impatient to hear me out. "How can I believe you? People never act without design." "I have explained my design," I said, repressing a smile with difficulty. Her eyes were incensed. Their beauty made them almost unreal. "You are still standing!" she exclaimed. "I beg that you will be seated. Pray do not mind me. I am of an excitable temperament, and when I converse it is difficult for me to keep still." She left the window, went to the end of the room, and gazed at me thence, like some beautiful savage, untamed, startled, exquisitely unconventional. I borrowed her tone; she was free-spoken; she would like free-speaking. "My apology--if apology it were--does not contain the whole truth. But your goodness will not allow you to think me so great a culprit as I appear. I had met you once; your appearance piqued me; I desired to make your acquaintance and have tried an experiment which I beseech you not to render ignominious." "Piqued, Sir! How were you piqued?" "Piqued is not the word. But I dare not substitute the right expression. I will not be so rude as to utilise the privilege your own candour confers." She came over and stood opposite me. "You say, Mr. Thorburn, you have met me. That is impossible." "If I prevaricated before, I am truthful now." "I have not been out of this house for a month. Oh! I suppose you saw me from your grounds." "The thick hedge and the trees that divide us would prevent that." "You may have found the means of looking over?" I smiled. "No, indeed. Great as my curiosity may have been, my politeness, I am sure, is vigorous enough to keep it well disciplined." "Curiosity! what should there be in me to excite curiosity?" "Curiosity is the daughter of admiration." "I am a widow," she continued vehemently. "I lead a sequestered life. I visit nowhere. I receive no visits. Is it because I am a Roman Catholic that you are curious?" "Do you take me for a missionary, Mrs. Fraser? I assure you I was ignorant of your faith. Of your habits I know only from the information of my housekeeper. A fellow-feeling makes us kind. I, too, am a recluse, loving solitude as well as yourself." "Impossible!" she exclaimed impetuously, "or you would not have called here." I could have told her that I loved beauty more than solitude. But I held my tongue. "Where did you meet me?" she asked. "I met you in the fields outside our respective grounds." "Never!" she cried. "Never have I passed the gate that leads into those fields." There was something singular in her vehemence. But it made her beauty more remarkable by the life it imparted to it.