‘Thank you for your approbation. Will you give me away when I relinquish the name of Keeldar for that of Moore?’

Mr. Yorke, instead of replying, gazed at her much puzzled. He could not divine what her look signified, whether she spoke in earnest or in jest. There was purpose and feeling, banter and scoff playing, mingled, on her mobile lineaments.

‘I don’t understand thee,’ he said, turning away.

She laughed.

‘Take courage, sir; you are not singular in your ignorance. But I suppose if Moore understands me that will do, will it not?’

‘Moore may settle his own matters henceforward for me. I’ll neither meddle nor make with them further.’

A new thought crossed her: her countenance changed magically. With a sudden darkening of the eye and austere fixing of the features, she demanded:

‘Have you been asked to interfere? Are you questioning me as another’s proxy?’

‘The Lord save us! Whoever weds thee must look about him! Keep all your questions for Robert: I’ll answer no more on ’em. Good-day, lassie!’

The day being fine, or at least fair—for soft clouds curtained the sun, and a dim but not chill or waterish haze slept blue on the hills—Caroline, while Shirley was engaged with her callers, had persuaded Mrs. Pryor to assume her bonnet and summer shawl, and to take a walk with her up towards the narrow end of the Hollow.

Here the opposing sides of the glen approaching each other, and becoming clothed with brushwood and stunted oaks, formed a wooded ravine, at the bottom of which ran the mill-stream, in broken unquiet course, struggling with many stones, chafing against rugged banks, fretting with gnarled tree-roots, foaming, gurgling, battling as it went. Here, when you had wandered half a mile from the mill, you found a sense of deep solitude; found it in the shade of unmolested trees; received it in the singing of many birds, for which that shade made a home. This was no trodden way; the freshness of the wood-flowers attested that foot of man seldom pressed them; the abounding wild-roses looked as if they budded, bloomed, and faded under the watch of solitude, as in a sultan’s harem. Here you saw the sweet azure of blue- bells, and recognised in pearl-white blossoms, spangling the grass, a humble type of some star-lit spot in space.

Mrs. Pryor liked a quiet walk; she ever shunned highroads, and sought byways and lonely lanes; one companion she preferred to total solitude, for in solitude she was nervous; a vague fear of annoying encounters broke the enjoyment of quite lonely rambles; but she feared nothing with Caroline; when once she got away from human habitations, and entered the still demesne of Nature, accompanied by this one youthful friend, a propitious change seemed to steal over her mind and beam in her countenance. When with Caroline—and Caroline only—her heart, you would have said, shook off a burden, her brow put aside a veil, her spirits, too, escaped from a restraint; with her she was cheerful; with her, at times, she was tender; to her she would impart her knowledge, reveal glimpses of her experience, give her opportunities for guessing what life she had lived, what cultivation her mind had received, of what calibre was her intelligence, how and where her feelings were vulnerable.

To-day, for instance, as they walked along, Mrs. Pryor talked to her companion about the various birds singing in the trees, discriminated their species, and said something about their habits and peculiarities. English natural history seemed familiar to her. All the wild-flowers round their path were recognised by her: tiny plants springing near stones and peeping out of chinks in old walls—plants such as Caroline