the walk hasn't seemed nearly so long as usual. Well,
good-by."

"May I have those violets?" says Branscombe, pointing to a little
bunch of those fair comers of the spring that lies upon her breast.

"You may," she says, detaching them from her gown and giving them to
him willingly, kindly, but without a particle of the tender confusion
he would gladly have seen in her. "They are rather faded," she says,
with some disappointment; "you could have picked yourself a sweeter
bunch on your way home."

"I hardly think so."

"Well, good-by again," she says, turning up to him the most bewitching
and delicious of small faces, "and be sure you put my poor flowers in
water. They will live the longer for it."

"They shall live forever. A hundred years hence, were you to ask me
where they were, I swear I should be able to show them."

"A very safe oath," says Miss Broughton; and then she gives him her
hand, and parts from him, and runs all the way down the short avenue
to the house, leaving him to turn and go on to Gowran.

CHAPTER XX.

"There have been hearts whose friendship gave
Them thoughts at once both soft and grave."

In the drawing-room he finds Clarissa sitting among innumerable spring
offerings. The whole place seems alive with them. "The breath of
flowers is on the air." Primroses and violets shine out from tiny
Etruscan vases, and little baskets of pale Belleek are hidden by
clustering roses brought from the conservatory to make sweet the
sitting-room of their mistress.

"I am so glad you have come," says Clarissa, rising with a smile to
welcome him, as he comes up to her. "The day was beginning to drag a
little. Come over here, and make yourself comfortable."

"That will I, right willingly, so it pleases you, madam," says Dorian,
and straightway, sinking into the desirable lounging-chair she has
pointed out, makes himself thoroughly happy.

A low bright fire is burning merrily; upon the rug a snow-white
Persian cat sinks blinking; while Billy, the Irish terrier, whose head
is bigger than his body, and whose hair is of the shabbiest, reclines
gracefully upon an ottoman near. Clarissa, herself, is lying back upon
a cushioned chair, looking particularly pretty, if a trifle indolent.

"Now for your news," she says, in the tone one adopts when expecting
to be amused.

Dorian, lifting his arms, lays them behind his head.

"I wonder if ever in all my life I had any news," he says,
meditatively