CHAPTER XXXVII.

AN ARDENT SUIT.

Hence bashful cunning!

And prompt me, plain and holy innocence !

I am your wife, if you will marry me.--The Tempest.

ADVANCING with nervous haste towards him, she said, in short breathless sentences, 'Maurice, I wrote that. I wanted to see you, I was so unhappy.'

'About your evidence? Pooh! it will make no difference.'

'I was unhappy before that, Maurice.' Here she paused for a moment; but, as Maurice, looking gloomily down upon her, said nothing to help her, she went on. 'I was unhappy about the change in you. You're so changed to me.'

'I made a mistake,' he broke in sharply and bitterly.

'I

'You have; you have,' she cried eagerly, and stopped there in great confusion. mean,' she stammered, recovering herself somewhat, if you think I am changed to you.'

I dare say you care for me as you always did, Norah,' he said, with such a wistful sadness in his look, and such a profound depth of despondency in his tone, as moved her to say passionately and impetuously, 'Maurice, I care more for you than for anyone else in the world, except father.'

He started as though shot.

'Maurice!' she exclaimed reproachfully.

'A man I had known a week!'

'But-but before you knew him a week I saw him with his arm round your waist. I saw him closeted with you in that room,' pointing towards the unused chamber.

'I can't explain,' faltered she distressfully. You can't explain!' he echoed with some scorn in his voice, taking the jaundiced view

of jealousy of her distress and perplexity. And, indeed, it was difficult, even for a mar unblinded by jealousy, to imagine any explanation that would justify a girl in permitting a stranger to put his arm round her waist.

You can't explain! Nor your being locked in alone in a room with him, nor your meeting him alone in the garden in the early morning, nor your wandering alone with him late at night on that moor!

As he launched these scathing charges in a tone of increasing scorn, Norah's plaintive and pleading expression changed to a look, first of pain, then of pride, and then of a deeper scorn than his. She had bared her whole heart and offered it, unasked, to him, to have it spurned in this withering way! She had drawn herself up to her full height while he was speaking, and, after he had finished, she turned haughtily and in silence to leave the room. But, before she had reached the door, the thought of the horrible peril into which she

had brought him arrested her and made her ashamed of her ebullition of pride and scorn. He was unhappy and embittered, and had, besides, good reasons for his degrading suspicions. Turning again, she went humbly back to him and said in a low, pleading, plaintive voice: 'Maurice, I never cared for Mr. Summers; I never willingly, when staying there, met him or walked with him or remained in a room with him alone. I can explain all that happened there, and I will explain it; what happened here I cannot explain. But I thought that my whole life, and you've known me all my life, and—and what I said just now'

She never finished the sentence, for Maurice caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately again and again. Her whole life, and what she had just said, and the childlike innocence of the sweet face upraised reproachfully to his, exorcised the demon of jealousy. That this proud girl should so conquer her pride as

to offer her heart, and again to offer it, in spite of its being spurned, to him who would tomorrow be branded a felon and a murderer! But, indeed, as he knew well, it was because he was in this disgrace and danger that she so humbled herself. 'My darling! What a brute I've been! You'll explain nothing; there's nothing to explain-except your goodness to me,' he cried between his kisses.

But I must explain that,' she said shyly, in a low voice with her lips close to his ear. 'Do you know why-why I proposed to you, Maurice?' she whispered, blushing so that he could feel the sudden warmth of her flushed cheek against his. Because it was the only way to get out of giving evidence against you.' She hoped he would understand, but he didn't in the least.

To get out of it?' he cried perplexed, turning his face to try to look into hers and find there a key to her meaning. But she was not going to let him see her face. Hiding it