“Dolly,” he said, “does Gowan never make you forget me?” Then she saw what he meant, and flushed up to her forehead, drawing her hand away and speaking hotly. “Oh!” she said, “it is _that_, is it?” “Yes,” he answered her, “it is that.” Then they stopped in their walk, and each looked at the other,--Griffith at Dolly, with a pale face and much of desperate, passionate appeal in his eyes; Dolly at Griffith, with her small head thrown back in sudden defiance. “I am making you angry and rousing you, Dolly,” he said; “but I cannot help it. There is scarcely a week passes in which I do not hear that he--that fellow--has managed to see you in one way or another. He can always see you,” savagely. “_I_ don't see you once a month.” “Ah!” said Dolly, with cruel deliberation, “_this_ is what Aimée meant when she told me to be careful, and think twice before I did things. I see now.” I have never yet painted Dolly Crewe as being a young person of angelic temperament. I have owned that she flirted and had a temper in spite of her Vagabondian good spirits, good-nature, and popularity; so my readers will not be surprised at her resenting rather sharply what she considered as being her lover's lack of faith. “I think,” she proceeded, opening her eyes wide and addressing him with her grandest air,--“I think I will walk the rest of my way alone, if you please.” It was very absurd and very tragical in a small way, of course, and assuredly she ought to have known better, and perhaps she did know better, but just now she was very fierce and very sharply disappointed. She positively turned away as if to leave him, but he caught hold of her arm and held her. “Dolly,” he cried, huskily, “you are not going away in that fashion. We never parted so in our lives.” She half relented,--not quite, but nearly, so very nearly that she did not try very hard to get away. It was Griffith, after all, who was trying her patience--if Gowan or any other man on earth had dared to imply a doubt in her, she would have routed him magnificently--in two minutes; but Griffith--ah, well, Griffith was different. “Whose fault is it?” she asked, breaking down ignominiously. “Who is to blame? I never ask you if other people make you forget me. I wanted to--to see you so much that I--I ran madly after you for a quarter of a mile, at the risk of being looked upon as a lunatic by any one who might have chanced to see me. But you don't care for that. I had better have bowed to you and passed on if we had met. Let me go!” “No,” said Griffith, “you shall not go. God knows if I could keep you, you should never leave my arms again.” “You would tire of me in a week, if I belonged to you in real earnest,” she said, not trying to get away at all now, however.