eyes among the neighbouring squires for a Paris, an Antony, or anything else with a presentable name.
What silly thoughts I have fallen upon! I look at my watch; six o'clock; more than time for me to go home. I pick up my hat, almost as shabby and quite as unbecoming as the one I used to wear at the old trysting-place—that trysting-place that I have never passed, never looked at since that Christmas morning. In our rambles at papa's heels, if he has gone that way I have dropped bebind and struck across the fields by another path. My way back to the house lies very near it; from a hedge that I shall pass I can see it quite plainly, but I never have any wish to see it. I should even like an earthquake to come and swallow up the spot that has such bitter-sweet memories. I leave the woodland, thinking how pretty it is, and that I will bring Dolly with me to-morrow, and go along the narrow lane that leads homeward, and, coming to the place from whence the field of rye is visible with the old stone stile, some over-mastering impulse impels me to climb the bank and look over. I part the boughs, and see standing, with arms folded on the top of the stone, Paul Vasher, looking out at the tender green and fresh spring beauty of field and meadow and wood.
CHAPTER VI.
And call upon my soul within the house."
"You know?" asks Dolly swiftly, as she lays her two hands on my shoulders and looks into my face.
"Yes, I know;" and in the soft spring twilight I go upstairs into my dusky pink-and-white chamber.
"When the bells rang out," says Dolly, with a certain anxious
