"Yet how dare I--" began Laurie. Again she glanced at him, terrified lest that which was in her heart should declare itself too plainly by eyes and lips; and she saw how he still looked across the garden, yet seeing nothing but his own thought written there against the glory of sky and leaf and grass. His face caught the splendor from the east, and she saw in it the lines that would tell always of the anguish through which he was come; and again the terror in her heart leapt to the other side, in spite of her confidence, and bade her fear lest through some mistake, some conventional shame, he should say no more. Then he turned his troubled eyes and looked her in the face, and as he looked the trouble cleared. "Why--Maggie!" he said. _Epilogue_ "The worst of it all is," said Maggie, four months later, to a very patient female friend who adored her, and was her _confidante_ just then--"the worst of it is that I'm not in the least sure of what it is that I believe even now." "Tell me, dear," said the girl. * * * * * The two were sitting out in a delightfully contrived retreat cut out at the lower end of the double hedge. Above them and on two sides rose masses of August greenery, hazel and beech, as close as the roof and walls of a summer-house: the long path ran in green gloom up to the old brick steps beneath the yews: and before the two girls rested the pleasant apparatus of tea--silver, china and damask, all the more delightful from its barbaric contrast with its surroundings. Maggie looked marvelously well, considering the nervous strain that had come upon her about Easter-time. She had collapsed altogether, it seemed, in Easter week itself, and had been for a long rest--one at her own dear French convent until a week ago, being entirely forbidden by the nuns to speak of her experiences at all, so soon as they had heard the rough outline. Mrs. Baxter had spent the time in rather melancholy travel on the Continent, and was coming back this evening. "It seems to me now exactly like a very bad dream," said Maggie pensively, beginning to measure in the tea with a small silver scoop. "Oh! Mabel; may I tell you exactly what is in my mind: and then we won't talk of it any more at all?" "Oh! do," said the girl, with a little comfortable movement. When the tea had been poured out and the plates set ready to hand, Maggie began. * * * * *