"Hadn't we better turn back, hear?" said Laura, very gently.

He looked up. They were a mile or two out of the village on a lonely
country road. They turned, and she said, softly, in the tone like the
touch of tender fingers on an aching spot--

"I knew it long ago, but I hadn't the heart to tell you. She set her cap
at him from the first. Don't take it too much to heart. She is not good
enough for you."

Sweet compassion! Idle words! Is there any such sense of ownership,
reaching even to the feeling of identity, as that which the lover has in
the one he loves? His thoughts and affections, however short the time,
had so grown about her and encased her, as the hardened clay imbeds the
fossil flower buried ages ago. It rather seems as if he had found her by
quarrying in the depths of his own heart than as if he had picked her
from the outside world, from among foreign things. She was never foreign,
else he could not have had that intuitive sense of intimateness with her
which makes each new trait which she reveals, while a sweet surprise, yet
seem in a deeper sense familiar, as if answering to some pre-existing
ideal pattern in his own heart, as if it were something that could not
have been different. In after years he may grow rich in land and gold,
but he never again will have such sense of absolute right and eternally
foreordained ownership in any thing as he had long years ago in that
sweet girl whom some other fellow married. For, alas! this seemingly
inviolable divine title is really no security at all. Love is liable to
ten million suits for breach of warranty. The title-deeds he gives to
lovers, taking for price their hearts' first-fruits, turn out no titles
at all. Half the time, title to the same property is given to several