The innocent child! Who could blame her for listening to it?--at first
with a little fear and a little reluctance, but gradually resigning her
whole heart to the charm of his soft syllables and his fervent manner,
until she gave him the promise he begged for,--love that was to be for
him alone, love for him alone among all the sons of men.

What an enchanted afternoon it was! how all too quickly it fled away,
one golden moment after another! and what a pang it gave her to find at
the end that there must be lying and deception! For, somehow, she had
been persuaded to acquiesce in her lover's desire for secrecy. As for
the lie, he told it with the utmost air of candour.

"Yes, we had a beautiful sail; and how enchanting the banks above here
are! Aunt, I am at your service to-morrow, if you wish to see them."

"Oh, your servant, Captain, but I am an indifferent sailor; and I trust
I have too much respect for myself and my new frocks, to crowd them into
a river cockboat!"

In a few minutes Joanna and the elder came in. He had called for her on
his way home; for he liked the society of the young and beautiful, and
there were many hours in which he thought Joanna fairer than her sister.
Then tea was served in a pretty parlour with Turkish walls and coloured
windows, which, being open into the garden, framed lovely living
pictures of blossoming trees. Every one was eating and drinking,
laughing and talking; so Katherine's unusual silence was unnoticed,
except by the elder, who indeed saw and heard everything, and who knew
what he did not see and hear by that kind of prescience to which wise
and observant years attain. He saw that the cakes Katherine dearly loved