DECEIVERS EVER.

CHAPTER I.

CAUGHT BY THE GALE.

JACK held both her hands within his.

"Let us stay one little short half-hour, as we are here!" he pleaded eagerly.

66

Why need we go at once?-it will not make any difference. They will not be back from the hills till nearly eight o'clock. You will be home again at the Cottage long before your aunt. Not a creature need ever know where we have been. What

VOL. III.

B

possible difference can half an hour, more or less, make to anybody? Ah, why should we not snatch one short half-hour out of the blank of our lives? Is there any sin in our being friends?"

"We had better go back, I know," said Ella, faintly, withdrawing her hands from his eager clasp. But she was wavering. She had fought the battle at first with him fiercely and unflinchingly-the battle of right against wrong-but now she was tired of fighting. She had not been so very angry with him, after all. Perhaps she, too, thought there was no great harm done; perhaps she, too, deemed that one short afternoon of happiness was not so very much to steal with one's own hands out of the barrenness of a desolate lifetime. There was no sin in their being here. He