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The tower and the room under it!For me!What a contemptibly little-minded and insignificant person she must think me. The words with which I strove to tell her that I wished to live here as lord, with her as my queen, would not come. She looked at me for a moment as I stood on the brink of saying something but not saying it, and then she turned suddenly toward the hammock.

“Did you see anything of a fan I left here?” she said.”I know I left it here, but when I came yesterday it was gone. Perhaps you may have noticed it somewhere–“

Now, the morning before, I had taken that fan home with me. It was an awkward thing to carry, but I had concealed it under my coat. It was a contemptible trick, but the fan had her initials on it, and as it was the only thing belonging to her of which I could possess myself, the temptation had been too great to resist. As she stood waiting for my answer there was a light in her eye which illuminated my perceptions.

“Did you see me take that fan?” I asked.

“I did,” said she.

“Then you know,” I exclaimed, stepping nearer to her, “why it is I did not leave this country as I intended, why it was impossible for me to tear myself away from this house, why it is that I have been here every morning, hovering around and doing the things I have been doing?”

She looked up at me, and with her eyes she said, “How could I help knowing?”She might have intended to say something with her lips, but I took my answer from her eyes, and with the quick impulse of a lover I stopped her speech.

“You have strange ways,” she said presently, blushing and gently pressing back my arm.”I haven’t told you a thing.”

“Let us tell each other everything now,” I cried, and we seated ourselves in the hammock.

It was a quarter of an hour later and we were still sitting together in the hammock.

“You may think,” said she, “that, knowing what I did, it was very queer for me to come out to you this morning, but I could not help it. You were getting dreadfully careless, and were staying so late and doing things which people would have been bound to notice, especially as father is always talking about our enjoying the fresh hours of the morning, that I felt I could not let you go on any longer. And when it came to that fan business I saw plainly that you must either immediately start for Europe or–“

“Or what?” I interrupted.

“Or go to my father and regularly engage yourself as a–“

I do not know whether she was going to say “gardener” or not, but it did not matter. I stopped her.

It was perhaps twenty minutes later, and we were standing together at the edge of the woods. She wanted me to come to the house to take breakfast with them.

“Oh, I could not do that!” I said.”They would be so surprised. I should have so much to explain before I could even begin to state my case.”

“Well, then, explain,” said she.”You will find father on the front piazza. He is always there before breakfast, and there is plenty of time. After all that has been said here, I cannot go to breakfast and look commonplace while you run away.”

“But suppose your father objects?” said I.

“Well, then you will have to go back and take breakfast with your miller,” said she.

I never saw a family so little affected by surprises as those Vincents. When I appeared on the front piazza the old gentleman did not jump. He shook hands with me and asked me to sit down, and when I told him everything he did not even ejaculate, but simply folded his hands together and looked out over the railing.