justice. But in truth the situation was sometimes touching; and the more
so to Walter that the hero was the lady's inferior in birth, means, and
position--much more her inferior than Walter was Lufa's. The lady alone
was on the side of the lowly born; father, mother, brothers, sisters,
uncles, aunts, and cousins to the remotest degree, against him even to
hatred. The general pathos of the idea disabled the criticism of the
audience, composed of the authoress and the reader, blinding perhaps
both to not a little that was neither brilliant nor poetic. The lady
wept at the sound of her own verses from the lips of one who was to her
in the position of the hero toward the heroine; and the lover, critic as
he was, could not but be touched when he saw her weep at passages
suggesting his relation to her; so that, when they found the hand of the
one resting in that of the other, it did not seem strange to either.
When suddenly the lady snatched hers away, it was only because a
mischievous little bird spying them, and hurrying away to tell, made a
great fluttering in the foliage. Then was Walter's conscience not a
little consoled, for he was aware of a hearty love for the poem. Under
such conditions he could have gone on reading it all the night!




CHAPTER XVI.


THE RIDE TOGETHER.

Days passed, and things went on much the same, Walter not daring to tell
the girl all he felt, but seizing every opportunity of a _tete-a-tete_,
and missing none of the proximity she allowed him, and she never seeming