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“Why, certainly,” and he sprang to his feet again.

She commanded him to his chair with an imperative gesture. “I have got to find out what I think, first, myself. If I were sure that I loved you–but I don’t know. I believe you are good. I believed that when they were all joking you there at breakfast, and you took it so nicely; I have always believed that you were good.”

She seemed to be appealing to him for confirmation, but he could not very well say that she was right, and he kept silent. “I didn’t like your telling that story at the dinner, and I said so; and then I went and did the same thing, or worse; so that I have nothing to say about that. And I think you have behaved very nobly to Mr. St. John.” As if at some sign of protest in Hewson, she insisted, “Yes, I do! But all this doesn’t prove that I love you.” Again she seemed to appeal to him, and this time he thought he might answer her appeal.

“I couldn’t prove that I love you, but I feel sure of it.”

“And do you believe that we ought to take our feelings for a guide?”

“That’s what people do,” he ventured, with the glimmer of a smile in his eyes, which she was fixing so earnestly with her own.

“I am not satisfied that it is the right way,” she answered. “If there is really such a thing as love there ought to be some way of finding it out besides our feelings. Don’t you think it’s a thing we ought to talk sensibly about?”

“Of all things in the world; though it isn’t the custom.”

Miss Hernshaw was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I believe I should like a little time.”

“Oh, I didn’t expect you to answer me at once,–I”

“But if you are going to Europe?”

“I needn’t go to Europe at all. I can go to St. Johnswort, and wait for your answer there.”

“It might be a good while,” she urged. “I should want to tell my father that I was thinking about it, and he would want to see you before he approved.”

“Why, of course!”

“Not,” she added, “that it would make any difference, if I was sure of it myself. He has always said that he would not try to control me in such a matter, and I think he would like you. I do like you very much myself, Mr. Hewson, but I don’t think it would be right to say I loved you unless I could prove it.”

Hewson was tempted to say that she could prove it by marrying him, but he had not the heart to mock a scruple which he felt to be sacred. What he did say was: “Then I will wait till you can prove it. Do you wish me not to see you again, before you have made up your mind?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see what harm there would be in our meeting.” “No, I can’t, either,” said Hewson, as she seemed to refer the point to him. “Should you mind my coming again, say, this evening?”

“To-night?” She reflected a moment. “Yes, come to-night.”

When he came after dinner, Hewson was sensible from the perfect unconsciousness of Mrs. Rock’s manner that Miss Hernshaw had been telling her. Her habit of a wandering eye, contributed to the effect she wished to produce, if this were the effect, and her success was such that it might easily have deceived herself. But when Mrs. Rock, in a supreme exercise of her unconsciousness, left him with the girl for a brief interval before it was time for him to go, Miss Hernshaw said, “Mrs. Rock knows about it, and she says that the best way for me to find out will be to try whether I can live without you.”

“Was that Mrs. Rock’s idea?” asked Hewson, as gravely as he could.