"I do not think him quite so handsome as Kenneth," Marian answered with some hesitation, "he doesn't look so good and noble and true. But," she added quickly, the color deepening on her cheek, "I do not know him well enough yet to judge of his character, and he talks very well. Now shall we go on with our reading? I can only stay to finish the chapter, for you see the sun is getting low." Lyttleton, as he rode briskly on toward his temporary home, was saying to himself, with an evil smile, "A pretty girl, very young, hardly sixteen I should say, and as innocent as a child; I flatter myself 'twill be no difficult task to win her confidence and learn all she knows. How much that may be I have yet to discover." Determined to make diligent use of his opportunities, he became from that time a daily visitor at Woodland, and so conducted himself as to win the entire confidence of all three ladies, and cause them to look upon his visits as a great treat. He had travelled much and had many adventures to relate, and stores of information to impart in regard to the strange lands he had seen. He had spent some weeks in Paris during the late Revolution, had witnessed the execution of Marie Antoinette and of many of the nobility, and had had some narrow escapes of his own; all of which he described to his little audience with thrilling effect. Often, too, he brought a book in his pocket, usually Shakespeare's works, Milton's Paradise Lost, or some other poem, from which he would read passages in a rich, mellow voice so exquisitely modulated that it seemed to double the beauty of the author's words. Marian's soul was full of poetry, and she would listen like one enchanted, her eyes shining, her lips slightly apart, her breathing almost suspended lest she should lose a single word or tone. Lyttleton, without seeming to do so, noted it all with secret delight. After a little he fell into the habit of accompanying her on her homeward ride or walk, whichever it might be, and of meeting her in her rambles, thus gradually placing himself on a footing of intimacy. And Marian had forgotten her first intuitive perception of his character; his charms of person and manner had come to exert a strange fascination over her; she thought of neither the past nor the future when he was by her side, but lived only in the blissful present, while he saw and exulted in his power. He made no open declaration of love, but when they were alone in the silent woods it breathed in every look and tone, filling the innocent girlish heart with a strange, exquisite, tremulous happiness. Caius, always by her side, or crouching at her feet, was the sole witness of these interviews, and Marian could not bring herself to speak of them even to her two old friends, who, in their guilelessness, had no thought of harm to her from the daily intercourse of which they were cognizant.