"Then you find me distasteful? You would banish me? I could not learn to
endure it!"

Lady Catharine looked at him curiously. "Actually, sir," said she, "you
cause me to chill. I could half fear you. What is in your heart? Surely,
this is a strange love-making."

"And by that," cried John Law, "know, then the better of the truth.
Listen! I know! And this is what I know--that I shall succeed, and that
I shall love you always!"

"'Tis what one hears often from men, in one form or another," said the
girl, coolly, seating herself as she spoke.

"Talk not to me of other men--I'll not brook it!" cried he, advancing
toward her a few rapid paces. "Think you I have no heart?" His eye
gleamed, and he came on yet a step in his strange wooing. "Your face is
here, here," he cried, "deep in my heart! I must always look upon it, or
I am a lost man!"

"'Tis a face not so fair as that," said the Lady Catharine, demurely.

"'Tis the fairest face in England, or in the world!" cried her lover;
and now he was close at her side. Her hand, she knew not how, rested in
his own. Something of the honesty and freedom from coquetry of the young
woman's nature showed in her next speech, inconsequent, illogical,
almost unmaidenly in its swift sincerity and candor.

"'Tis a face but blemished," said she, slowly, the color rising to her
cheek. "See! Here is the birth-mark of the house of Knollys. They tell