ould only be accepted as frank truth.

Perhaps, if Miss Grey had been a town-bred girl, she might have
hesitated about setting out for a companionable walk in the park with a
young man who was almost a stranger to her. But, as it was, she
appeared to herself to have all the right of free action belonging to
one in a place of which the public opinion can in no wise touch her.
She acted in London as freely as one speaks with a friend in a foreign
hotel room, where he knows that the company around are unable to
understand what he is saying. In this particular instance, however,
Minola hardly thought about the matter at all. There was something in
Heron's open and emotional way which made people almost at the first
meeting cease to regard him as a stranger. Perhaps, if Minola had
thought over the matter, she might have cited in vindication of her
course the valuable authority of Major Pendennis, who, when asked
whether Laura might properly take walks in the Temple Gardens with
Warrington, eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad, of course, you go out with
him. It's like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody
in the Gardens; and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of
thing. Everybody walks in the Temple Gardens." Regent's Park, one would
think, ought to come under the same laws. There are beadles there, too,
or guardian functionaries of some sort, although it may be owned that
in their walk to and from the canal bridge Heron and Minola encountered
none of them.

It is doubtful whether Heron at least would have noticed such a
personage even had they come in their way, for he talked nearly all the
time, except when he paused for an answer to some direct question, and
he seldom took his eyes from Minola's face. He was not staring at her,
or broadly admiring her; nor, indeed, was there anything in his manner
to make it certain that he was admiring her at all, as man
conventionally is understood to admire woman. But he had evidently put
Miss Grey into the place of a sympathetic and trusted friend, and he
talked to her accordingly. She was amused and interested, and she now
and then kept making little disparaging criticisms to herself, in order
to sustain her place as the cool depreciator of man. But she was very
happy for all that.

One characteristic peculiarity of this sudden and singular
acquaintanceship ought to be mentioned. When people still read "Gil
Blas" they would have remembered at once how the waiti