118 A CONTRE-TEMPS.

** It is,” said he.

She took two-pence from her little black silk bag,
and wrapping them up in a small piece of writing
paper, on which some words were written, gave them
to him.

She saw him read the words—that was what she
intended—and yet, for the life of her she could not
help feeling almost faint as she did so ; and without
venturing another glance at him, she put the Indian
rubber, which he had carefully wrapped up for her,
in her bag, and hurried out paler than ever ; and with
such a trembling in her knees, that she thought
certainly she should drop.

Reynolds, on his part, was no less agitated ; the
words on the paper were these: “I am deeply inte-
rested in the happiness of one dear to me as life;
this obliges me to ask a private interview with you.
Will you meet me this afternoon at four o clock, in
the fields between the old cotton mill and Crake-
marsh.” -

Reynolds asked himself a thousand questions, not
one of which he could answer. His feelings were of
a very mixed kind. For one moment he was sorry
that she had done this; the next he was charmed and
flattered. What young man of five-and-twenty would
not have been so too ?

At half-past three, he was sitting, very carefully
dressed—he had never taken such pains with his
person before—on the stile just beyond the old cotton
mill, looking towards the town, that he might catch
the first glimpse of her; and a little after he saw
the light, neat, black-apparelled form of Marianne
approaching. He leaped down from his seat, and
sprang forward to meet her. She looked paler than