“Why will you wrong me so?” he cried, smarting under the lash of her injustice. “You know I did not betray you before?” “But--but--why do you meddle with me so?” she cried, with a bewildered air. “You are always finding out things--and--and always blaming me!” “No, no, child, I do not always blame you, I do not want to meddle--yet I--yet you--seem so ignorant, I ought to--to advise you. Will you listen to me kindly, Louise?” “Go on,” she answered, folding her hands in her lap and looking so like a martyr that he cried out hastily: “Do not look as if a big bear was going to eat you, Louise. I only want to tell you that it is not right to have secrets from your good aunt--to have a shabby lover whom you write to and meet by stealth. No good will come of such a clandestine affair.” “Heaven give me patience!” cried Molly indignantly. “Poor Johnny, to think of this rich man calling you shabby! But, Mr. Laurens, that was no meeting by stealth just now. If you heard his first words you must know that it was not an appointment.” “No, he came because he had heard you were here--that was the difference,” dryly. “But the first time I met you, you know--when Hero flung you over his head at my feet--perhaps you met him that night, perhaps--” “Perhaps you are a great simpleton, Cecil Laurens!” Molly cried, indignantly. “I did not meet him that night, nor any night. Morover, he is no lover of mine. I never had a lover in my life!” “You have one now!” Cecil Laurens said softly, but Molly did not comprehend. “I have not!” she declared angrily. “Poor Johnny came here because he thought that my step-sister was here. They have been engaged two years, and he can not get a salary large enough to support them, and Lou--I mean my sister Molly,” crimsoning, “is angry and wants to break it off. And I promised to beg her to make it up with the poor fellow, and to write to him, so there!” “That step-sister again! It is the first time I ever was glad to hear her name!” exclaimed Cecil, radiant. “Oh, Louise, how glad I am that he was her lover and not yours!” “What have you got to do with it any way?” she demanded pettishly. “I love you!” he replied, audaciously. CHAPTER XIV. The black eyes and the blue ones met for an instant, Cecil’s full of passion, Molly’s full of incredulous amazement, but her lover did not wait for her to utter a protest, he caught her little hands in both his own--and said eagerly: “Louise, darling, I owe you an apology for the unjust words I said to you that day at Ferndale. They were not true, for I love you as I hinted to you then, and it was pique at your rejoinder that made me blurt out those untruthful words. Will you forgive me, and let me love you?”