ss and be friends with
him again." She stoops towards him, and looks earnestly into his face.
He laughs a little.

"I'm tremendous friends with him, really," he says, "if you would only
try to believe it. I think him no end of a good fellow, if slightly
impossible at times. When he recovers from the attack of insanity that
is at present rendering him very obnoxious, I shall be delighted to
let by-gones be by-gones. But until then----"

"You will tell him of your engagement?"

"Perhaps: if occasion offers."

"No, not perhaps. Go to-day, this very evening, and tell him of it."

"Oh, I can't, really, you know," says Mr. Branscombe, who always finds
a difficulty in refusing any one anything.

"You must,"--with decision: "he surely deserves so much at your
hands."

"But how few of us get our deserts!" says Dorian, still plainly
unimpressed.

"Well, then, I think you should speak of it openly to him,--if only
for Georgie's sake."

"For her sake?" He colors again, and bites his lips. "If you really
think I owe it to her, of course I shall do it, however distasteful
the task may be; though I cannot see how it will benefit her."

"He is your uncle; you will wish your own family to receive her?"

"I dare say you are right," says Branscombe, with a shrug. "People
always are when they suggest to you an unpleasant course."

"What is unpleasant now? How can there be anything to distress any one
on such a heavenly day as this?" cries the soft petulant voice he
loves so well, calling to them across a flower-bed near.

Springing over it, she comes up to the window, and, leaning her elbows
on the sill close to him, laughs gayly up into his face.

"There shall be nothing to distress you, at all events, my 'amber
witch,'" returns he, gayly, too. "Come, show me once more these
gardens you love so well."

* * * * *

A promise with Dorian is not made of pie-crust: though sorely against
his will, he goes up to Hythe after dinner to acquaint his uncle
formally of his approaching marriage. The evening is calm and full of
rest and quiet, a fit ending to the perfect day that has gone before:

"The long day wanes, the broad fields fade; the night--
The sweet June night--is like a curtain drawn.
The dark lanes know no faintest sound, and white
The pallid hawthorn lights the smooth-bleached lawn;
The scented earth drinks from the silent skies
Soft dews, more sweet than softest harmonie