“You need not make yourself unhappy on that point — your poor return for his love, my dear,” said Lyndall. “A man’s love is a fire of olive-wood. It leaps higher every moment; it roars, it blazes, it shoots out red flames; it threatens to wrap you round and devour you — you who stand by like an icicle in the glow of its fierce warmth. You are self-reproached at your own chilliness and want of reciprocity. The next day, when you go to warm your hands a little, you find a few ashes! ’Tis a long love and cool against a short love and hot; men, at all events, have nothing to complain of.”

“You speak so because you do not know men,” said Em, instantly assuming the dignity of superior knowledge so universally affected by affianced and married women in discussing man’s nature with their uncontracted sisters.

“You will know them, too, some day, and then you will think differently,” said Em, with the condescending magnanimity which superior knowledge can always afford to show to ignorance.

Lyndall’s little lip quivered in a manner indicative of intense amusement. She twirled a massive ring upon her forefinger — a ring more suitable for the hand of a man, and noticeable in design — a diamond cross let into gold, with the initials “R. R.” below it.

“Ah, Lyndall,” Em cried, “perhaps you are engaged yourself — that is why you smile. Yes; I am sure you are. Look at this ring!”

Lyndall drew the hand quickly from her.

“I am not in so great a hurry to put my neck beneath any man’s foot; and I do not so greatly admire the crying of babies,” she said, as she closed her eyes half wearily and leaned back in the chair. “There are other women glad of such work.”

Em felt rebuked and ashamed. How could she take Lyndall and show her the white linen and the wreath, and the embroidery? She was quiet for a little while, and then began to talk about Trana and the old farm-servants, till she saw her companion was weary; then she rose and left her for the night. But after Em was gone Lyndall sat on, watching the old crone’s face in the corner, and with a weary look, as though the whole world’s weight rested on these frail young shoulders.

The next morning, Waldo, starting off before breakfast with a bag of mealies slung over his shoulder to feed the ostriches, heard a light step behind him.

“Wait for me; I am coming with you,” said Lyndall, adding as she came up to him, “If I had not gone to look for you yesterday you would not have come to greet me till now. Do you not like me any longer, Waldo?”

“Yes — but — you are changed.”

It was the old clumsy, hesitating mode of speech.