discoveries in that dog-eared science.

So it was, when she was most eloquent, most earnestly inspired--nay in
the very middle of a plea for sweetness and light and simple living,
that his reasonings found voice in the material comment:

"I never imagined you were engaged!"

"Is that what you have been thinking about?" she asked, innocently
astonished.

"Yes. Why not? I never for one instant supposed--"

"But, Mr. Siward, why should you have concerned yourself with supposing
anything? Why indulge in any speculation of that sort about me?"

"I don't know, but I didn't," he said.

"Of course you didn't; you'd known me for about three hours--there on the
cliff--"

"But--Quarrier--!"

Over his youthful face a sullen shadow had fallen--flickering, not yet
settled. He would not for anything on earth have talked freely to the
woman destined to be Quarrier's wife. He had talked too much anyway.
Something in her, something about her had loosened his tongue. He had
made a plain ass of himself--that was all,--a garrulous ass. And truly it
seemed that the girl beside him, even in the starlight, could follow and
divine what he had scarcely expressed to himself; or her instincts had