"Miss Remy-Delilah-you are in my thoughts night and day! Like that Delilah of old, you are an enchantress, and you have enchanted my heart! I…"

"Pray say no more, Mr. Calvert," Lilah murmured, trying to repossess herself of her hand. The infatuated Mr. Calvert, impervious to her tugging, clung doggedly to her fingers as he sank to one knee before her. She looked down in dismay at the curly brown head bent over her hand.

Michael Calvert was hardly more than a boy, perhaps a year or so younger than her own age of twenty-one. She was no more in love with him than with Hercules, her great-aunt's pampered spaniel, who was curled blissfully beside her in the porch swing at that moment, his short red hairs shedding copiously all over the fragile white silk of her Empire-style gown. But so far it had been as impossible to convince Mr. Calvert of her disinterest as it had been to discourage Hercules. Neither of them seemed the least inclined to take a polite hint. Mr. Calvert had been courting her assiduously for most of the three months she had been visiting her great-aunt, Amanda Barton, at Boxhill. Nothing she had said or done to indicate her complete lack of interest in his suit had served to deter him in the least. Now he was clearly determined to have his say. If he heard her soft-spoken plea, he disregarded it.

Lilah sighed, making no effort to muffle the sound. Trapped in the night-dark corner of the verandah as she was, and unwilling to make a scene, she had little choice but to hear him out.

"I love you! I want you to be my wife!"

Much more had come in between, but she had missed a great deal of it. Now he recaptured her attention by pressing his face to her hand, kissing its back with moist enthusiasm. Lilah tugged at her hand again. He held it in a grip that would not be broken.