George, who stood outside the gate, his face
turned full towards her as she came down the
path, and who promptly took off his hat. She
returned his salutation with embarrassment,
but with undisguisable pleasure, and blushed
most becomingly.

"I suppose I ought to walk on and leave her;
but I won't," said George to himself, in the
momentary silence which followed their mutual
salutation, and then, in a kind of desperation,
he said:

"I am fortunate to meet you again, by a
lucky accident, Miss Carruthers. You are out
earlier to-day, and this is Cæsar's turn."

He patted the shiny black head of the
Newfoundland, who still obstructed the entrance to
the path, as he spoke, and Cæsar received
the attention tolerably graciously.

"Yes, I generally walk early, and ride in the
afternoon."

"Escorted by your dumb friends only," said
George, in a tone not quite of interrogation.
Miss Carruthers blushed again, as she replied:

"Yes, my horse and my dog are my
companions generally. My aunt never walks, and
Sir Thomas never rides. Were you going into
the park again, Mr. Ward?"

By this time Cæsar had run out into the road,
and was in a state of impatient perplexity, and
evidently much inconvenienced by the basket,
which he was too well trained to drop, but
shook disconsolately as he glanced reproachfully
at Clare, wondering how much longer she
meant to keep him waiting.

"No, Miss Carruthers, I was merely walking
past the Sycamores, and recalling yesterday's
pleasure—half gladly, half sadly, as I fancy we
recal all pleasures."

"I—I told my uncle of your visit yesterday,
and he said he was sorry to have missed you,
and hoped you would see as much of the park
as you liked. Did—did you finish your sketch,
Mr. Ward? Oh, that horrid Cæsar, he will
have the handle off my basket. Just see how
he is knocking it against the stile."

She came hurriedly through the open gateway
into the road, George following her.

"May I take it from him?" he said.

"Oh, pray do; there now, he is over the
stile, and running through the field."

George rushed away in pursuit of Cæsar,
triumphant in his success in thus terminating
a period of inaction for which he saw no
reasonable excuse. Miss Carruthers mounted
the stile in a more leisurely fashion, turned
into the footpath which led through the field,
and in a few moments met George returning,
her basket in his hand, and Cæsar slouching
along beside him, sulky and discontented.

She thanked George, told him she was going
nearly as far as Amherst by the "short cut,"
which lay through her uncle's land, and the
two young people in another minute found
themselves walking side by side, as if such an
arrangement were quite a matter of course, to
which Mrs. Grundy could not possibly make
any objection. Of course, it was highly
imprudent, not to say improper, and one of the
two was perfectly conscious alike of the
imprudence and the impropriety; perfectly
conscious, also, that both were increased by the
fact that he was George Dallas, and the young
lady was Clare Carruthers, the niece of his
step-father, the girl, mainly, on whose account
he had been shut out from the house called by
courtesy his mother's. As for Clare
Carruthers, she knew little or nothing of life and
the world of observances and rules of behaviour.
Sheltered from the touch, from the breath,
from the very knowledge of ill, the girl had
always been free with a frank innocent freedom,
happy with a guileless happiness, and as
unsophisticated as any girl could well be in this
wide-awake realistic nineteenth century. She
was highly imaginative, emphatically of the
romantic temperament, and, in short, a Lydia
Languish without the caricature. Her notions
of literary men, artists, and the like, were
derived from their works; and as the little glimpse
which she had as yet had of society (she had
only "come out" at the ball at Poynings in
February) had not enabled her to correct her
ideas by comparison with reality, she cherished
her illusions with ardour proportioned to their
fallaciousness. The young men of her acquaintance
were of either of two species: sons of country
gentlemen, with means and inclination to
devote themselves to the kind of life their fathers
led, or military magnificoes, of whom Clare,
contrary to the fashion of young ladies in
general, entertained a mean and contemptuous
opinion. When Captain Marsh and Captain
Clitheroe were home "on leave," they found it
convenient and agreeable to pass a good deal of
their leisure at Poynings; and as they happened
to be ninnies of the first magnitude, whose
insignificance in every sense worth mention was
only equalled by their conceit, Miss Carruthers
had conceived a prejudice against military men
in general, founded upon her dislike of the two
specimens with whom she was most familiar.
Clergymen are not uncommonly heroes in the
imagination of young girls, but the most
determined curate-worshipper could not have
invested the clergymen who cured the souls in
and about Arnherst with heroic qualities. They
were three in number. One was fat, bald, and
devoted to antiquarianism and port wine.
Another was thin, pock-marked, ill-tempered,
deaf, and a flute-player. The third was a magistrate,
a fox-hunter, and a despiser of woman-
kind. In conclusion, all three were married,
and Miss Carruthers was so unsophisticated,
that, if they had been all three as handsome and
irresistible as Adonis, she would never have
thought of them in the way of mundane
admiration, such being the case. So Clare's
imagination had no home pasture in which to
feed, and roamed far afield.

It had taken its hue from her tastes, which
were strongly pronounced, in the direction of
literature. Clare had received a "good education;"
that is to say, she had been placed by a
fashionable mother under the care ot a fashionable
governess, who had superintended fashionable
masters while they imparted a knowledge