“Mr. Herrick thinks it more discreet to climb over the wall!” suggested Priscilla. She had a happy faculty for being spiteful with a rosebud look of innocence. “What, Luke!” cried Lady Lochore, seizing the young man by the arm and dragging him towards the entrance, “so cast down! Was the fair widow then hard of approach to-day? Pluck up heart, lad. What! You a poet, you a little nephew of the original Herrick, and not know that when a woman assumes the defensive she is just considering the question of surrender? Why, what a lady this is! Eh, Priscilla, poor you and poor me must hide our diminished heads!” She broke into a jeering laugh as the girl crimsoned and tossed her chin; her great hollow eyes danced, brighter even that those of the lover in his renewed confidence; her cheeks flamed a deeper scarlet than those of the mortified girl herself. She sketched a favorite gavotte step or two, as she gave her hand with a flourish to Colonel Harcourt that he might lead her across the forbidden threshold. Ellinor, seated on the stone bench, with her empty basket before her, staring with unseeing eyes at the little bluish stars that spread all over the bed where flourished the herb Euphrosine, was suddenly disturbed from her melancholy musing. These loud voices, this trivial laughter! By what freak of irresponsible folly were these few roods of ground (which now she had as much interest to keep inviolate, as ever Vestal virgin to keep her flame alive) to be again invaded? The intruders were actually in the garden: and no spot of it was hidden from David’s tower! She had just been chiding herself for her thoughtlessness of the previous day in permitting for a moment Herrick’s uninvited presence; for her light-mindedness in having found transient amusement in his company. Had she now failed again in faithfulness, was it possible that she could have omitted to lock the gate behind her? She hurriedly felt for her key; it hung on the ribbon of her apron. Then she rose upon an impulse: David had made her guardian here, she would keep the trust. With head held high and with determined step, she went to meet them. She lifted her voice boldly as she came within speaking distance. “Lady Lochore, if you found the gate open, this garden is none the less forbidden to visitors, by your brother’s wish. I must beg you all to leave it!” Lady Lochore, her white teeth gleaming between her parted lips, her deep eyes insolently fixed upon her cousin’s face, listened without a word. Then: “_Calmez-vous, ma chère_,” said she, “the gate was opened for us.” “Chide me!” Colonel Harcourt thrust his handsome presence to the front. “It would be sweet to be chidden by those rosy lips. The next best thing, I declare, to being——” He paused, let his eye finish the phrase with bold suggestion, and then concluded humourously, with an almost farcical hesitation and change of tone: “praised by them!”