If one should ever find it!" said Sissy.

"One?" Fothergill looked at her again. "Not _one_! Won't you hope we may
both find it?"

"Like the people who hunted for the Earthly Paradise," said Sissy
hurriedly. "Look! they are going to the ruins." And she hastened to join
the others.

Latimer noticed that she evidently, and very properly, would not permit
Fothergill to monopolize her, but seemed rather to avoid the fellow. To
his surprise, however, he found that there was no better fortune for
himself. Fothergill had brought a sailor cousin, a boy of nineteen,
curly-haired, sunburnt and merry, with a sailor's delight in flirtation
and fun, and Archibald Carroll fixed his violent though temporary
affections on Sissy the moment he was introduced to her at the priory.
To Latimer's great disgust, Sissy distinctly encouraged him, and the two
went off together during the progress round the ruins. There were some
old fish-ponds to be seen, with swans and reeds and water-lilies, and
when they were tired of scrambling about the gray walls there was a
little copse hard by, the perfection of sylvan scenery on a small scale.
The party speedily dispersed, rambling where their fancy led them, and
were seen no more till the hour which had been fixed for dinner. Mrs.
Latimer meanwhile chose a space of level turf, superintended the
unpacking of hampers, and when the wanderers came dropping in by twos
and threes from all points of the compass, professing unbounded
readiness to help in the preparations, there was nothing left for them
to do. Among the latest were Sissy and her squire, a radiant pair. She
was charmed with her saucy sailor-boy, who had no serious intentions or
hopes, who would most likely be gone on the morrow, and who asked
nothing more than to be happy with her through that happy summer day.
People and things were apt to grow perplexing and sad when they came
into her every-day life, but here was a holiday companion, arrived as
unexpectedly as if he were created for her holiday, with no such thing
as an afterthought about the whole affair.

Latimer sulked, but his rival smiled, when the two young people arrived.
For--thus argued Raymond Fothergill, with a vanity which was so calm, so
clear, so certain that it sounded like reason itself--it was not
possible that Sissy Langton preferred Carroll to himself. Even had it
been Latimer or Hardwicke! But Carroll--no! Therefore she used the one
cousin merely to avoid the other. B