"I do not wonder that you saw nothing worth caring for in me at first," rejoined Bessy. "If you had hated me, and despised me, I could not blame you; for when I think of my sauciness and folly that night and the next morning, I feel even now quite ashamed of myself. But there is some excuse to be made for a wild, somewhat spoiled girl, Richard, who has never known love, or what it means, or what it is like. She says and does a thousand things that she would never think of if she had a grain more experience. But now tell me, when was it you began first to judge a little more favourably of me? for all this has grown upon us so imperceptibly, that I do not really know where it began." "It began on my part," I answered, "that morning when we first rode over to Beavors--when you and I went to look at the pictures in the dining-room together. Then Bessy let me get a little peep at her heart, and that was quite enough, dear girl. I was more than half in love with you, Bessy, when we mounted our horses to return after the storm. It was high time that I should be so, Bessy; for I do not think if there had not been something more buoyant in my breast than mere humanity, we should ever have got out of that river." "I am afraid, Richard," said Bessy, "that by that time there was something more buoyant, as you call it, in my bosom, too. I don't mind telling you now, but all that afternoon, at Beavors, I had been feeling very strangely about you, and could not be half so saucy as I wished. I do not think I should have cared much about being drowned before I knew you; but then I did not like the thought of it at all." "Well, love," I answered, "that adventure was the first of those links between us, which I am now recapitulating--danger of the most desperate kind shared together." "Ay," cried Bessy, eagerly, "and benefits conferred--life saved--bold and noble daring to save it--O Richard, how could I ever think of making you unhappy after that?" "Assuredly, it bound us very closely together," I answered "No two people, after having experienced such sensations of interest and anxiety for each other, could ever feel towards each other as they did before." "It was very soon 'Richard and Bessy' after that," she answered, thoughtfully. Then, raising her eyes to mine, with one of her sunny smiles, she added--"And I fancy in our own hearts it was 'dear Richard' and 'dear Bessy.'"