"I do think you are the most terribly
ungallant man I ever met. To punish you for
that atrocious speech you must, before we
leave the house, show me the library. Ah!
Mr. Stewart, this is a grand room," she
said, looking round it with eyes that, for
a moment, seemed reverent. "If I might
come and read here," she said, coaxingly;
"if you would tell me what books to read,
and what I ought to think about them! If
you would teach me a little! If you would
spare me just one hour every day for a
reading lesson! Why do you shake your
head?"

"Too dangerous a position for me to
play schoolmaster to so pretty a pupil."

"I wish I were not pretty, then, Mr.
Stewart."

"Excuse me for saying, I doubt the
sincerity of that wish."

"I don't much care about being only
pretty. I should like to be beautiful."

"Beautiful in the way your Aunt Daisy
is, for instance? But it needs a great deal
to gain that sort of beauty."

"I suppose you are jesting, Mr. Stewart;
but it is not pretty of you to laugh at poor
Aunt Daisy."

"Miss Brown, you know better than to
suppose I am jesting. I say your Aunt
Daisy is beautiful."

"Then, if that is beauty," said Myrrha,
losing her temper all at once, "to look old
and worn, to have irregular features, and
no complexion to speak of, I retract my
wish to be beautiful. But either you are
jesting, or you are most extraordinarily
infatuated."

"It is certainly not a subject on which
I should choose to jest. I am quite willing
to grant that you are far prettier than
your aunt. Your features are not
irregular, you have a complexion to speak of,
you are in the first fresh bloom of youth;
but I maintain that your Aunt Daisy has a
higher kind of beauty."

Myrrha paused before speaking, then she
said: "I know I have made you angry,
because you call me Miss Brown. I am
more sorry than I can say. You had been
so kind to me. And now my happy day is
spoilt. But, I can't help saying it is very
extraordinary, Mr. Stewart, that you should
be so deluded about Aunt Daisy. Your
admiration of her character perplexes me.
I have the feeling that some day you will
know her better, and see her differently,
and then——"

"Miss Brown, pause in time. You are
wise; don't let your feelings carry you so
far that you say what I could never
forgive."

Myrrha took his advice; she did pause:
they were just then walking down a shady
and solitary beech glade. She took her
hand from his arm, and, leaning a moment
against a beech trunk, indulged in a short,
a very short, storm of tears. Mr. Stewart
merely waited. In a few minutes she passed
her embroidered handkerchief lightly over
her face, then looked up into Mr. Stewart's.

"Does it show? Are my eyes red? Do
I look as if I had been crying?"

"Not in the least."

"Now, Mr. Stewart, I am not going to
move from here till you forgive me, and
call me Myrrha again. I don't think I
am much more to blame than you are.
You don't know how you hurt me. You
are always showing me how frivolous and
empty you think me: how you despise
me. You never seem to believe in me if I
show any desire to be different: if I own
how I long to have some one strong and
true, and on whom I could rely to help
me, you ridicule me. You have been very,
very cruel to me, just, I suppose, because
I have shown frankly how I like you, how
I desire your kindness. This was such a
happy day, because you seemed to like me
to-day: and now it's all turned to bitterness,
and I'm very unhappy." Her eyes
were full of tears, and her voice was
ominously excited. " No, I won't, won't, won't
move till you call me Myrrha, and say
something kind to me."

"We will talk of all this some other
time, Myrrha. Come, take my arm again.
Forgive you? Yes, I forgive you—and
you must forgive me if you have anything
to forgive, and, if what you say is true, you
have a great deal."

Myrrha, after a suppressed sob or two,
took his arm, and let him lead her to where,
more than an hour ago, they had left Daisy,
and where Daisy still sat.

A day or two after this Myrrha met Mr.
Stewart with the words:

"I've found it out, Mr. Stewart, it is
not the rose that is your favourite flower,
though you let me think so. I have found
out what is your favourite. I came, quite
accidentally, in a book I was reading, upon
a quotation from Chaucer, in which he
speaks of the 'Day's Eye,' and of his love
for it——"

Mr. Stewart rightly concluded from this
explanation of Myrrha's, that she had been
studying Chaucer purposely to discover the
passage.