We thought you were on the veranda smoking and I should have company, until I saw you start off, and rush up and down the hedge like mad." Paul felt that he was losing his self-possession, and becoming nervous in her presence.

"I thought it was YOU," he stammered.
"Me! Out in the garden at this hour, alone, and in the broad moonlight?
What are you thinking of, Mr.Hathaway?
Do you know anything of convent rules, or is that your idea of your ward's education ?" He fancied that, though she smiled faintly, her voice was as tremulous as his own.
"I want to speak with you," he said, with awkward directness.

"I even thought of asking you to stroll with me in the garden." "Why not talk here ?" she returned, changing her position, pointing to the other end of the sofa, and drawing the whole overflow of her skirt to one side.

"It is not so very late, and Milly will return in a few moments." Her face was in shadow now, but there was a glow-worm light in her beautiful eyes that seemed faintly to illuminate her whole face.

He sank down on the sofa at her side, no longer the brilliant and ambitious politician, but, it seemed to him, as hopelessly a dreaming, inexperienced boy as when he had given her the name that now was all he could think of, and the only word that rose to his feverish lips.
"Yerba!" "I like to hear you say it," she said quickly, as if to gloss over his first omission of her formal prefix, and leaning a little forward, with her eyes on his.