“Well, then, we won’t talk of him at all. I was so surprised when he began to speak—so”——and Cynthia looked very lovely, blushing and dimpling-up as she remembered his words and looks. Suddenly she recalled herself to the present time, and her eye caught on the leaf full of blackberries—the broad, green leaf, so fresh and crisp when Molly had gathered it an hour or so ago, but now soft and flabby, and dying. Molly saw it, too, and felt a strange kind of sympathetic pity for the poor inanimate leaf.

“Oh! what blackberries! you’ve gathered them for me, I know!” said Cynthia, sitting down and beginning to feed herself daintily, touching them lightly with the ends of her taper fingers, and dropping each ripe berry into her open mouth. When she had eaten about half, she stopped suddenly short.

“How I should like to have gone as far as Paris with him!” she exclaimed. “I suppose it wouldn’t have been proper; but how pleasant it would have been! I remember at Boulogne” (another blackberry), “how I used to envy the English who were going to Paris; it seemed to me then as if nobody stopped at Boulogne but dull, stupid, school-girls.”

“When will he be there?” asked Molly.

“On Wednesday, he said. I’m to write to him there; at any rate, he’s going to write to me.”

Molly went about the adjustment of her dress in a quiet, business-like manner, not speaking much; Cynthia, although sitting still, seemed very restless. Oh! how much Molly wished that she would go!

“Perhaps, after all,” said Cynthia, after a pause of apparent meditation, “we shall never be married.”

“Why do you say that?” said Molly, almost bitterly. “You have nothing to make you think so. I wonder how you can bear to think you won’t, even for a moment.”

“Oh!” said Cynthia; “you mustn’t go and take me au grand sérieux. I daresay I don’t mean what I say, but, you see, everything seems a dream at present. Still, I think the chances are equal—the chances for and against our marriage, I mean. Two years! it’s a long time! he may change his mind, or I may; or some one else may turn up, and I may get engaged to him: what should you think of that, Molly? I’m putting such a gloomy thing as death quite on one side, you see; yet in two years how much may happen!”

“Don’t talk so, Cynthia, please don’t,” said Molly piteously. “One would think you didn’t care for him, and he cares so much for you!”

“Why, did I say I didn’t care for him? I was only calculating chances. I’m sure I hope nothing will happen to prevent the marriage. Only, you know, it may; and I thought I was taking a step in wisdom, in looking forward to all the evils that might befall. I’m sure, all the wise people I’ve ever known thought it a virtue to have gloomy prognostics of the future. But you’re not in a mood for wisdom or virtue, I see; so I’ll go and get ready for dinner, and leave you to your vanities of dress.”

She took Molly’s face in both her hands, before Molly was aware of her intention, and kissed it playfully. Then she left Molly to herself.