this price," said he, looking at his splashed boots.

"And that excursion, that ramble, or whatever be the name for it, you
were to take together?"

"It is a bliss, I am afraid, I must deny myself."

"You are wrong, my Lord,--very wrong. My brothers at least assure me
that Julia is charming _en tete-a-tete_. Indeed, Augustus says one
does not know her at all till you have passed an hour or two in such
confidential intimacy. He says 'she comes out'--whatever that may
be--wonderfully."

"Oh, she comes out, does she?" said he, caressing his whiskers.

"That was his phrase for it. I take it to mean that she ventures to talk
with a freedom more common on the Continent than in these islands. Is
that coming out, my Lord?"

"Well, I half suspect it is," said he, smiling faintly.

"And I suppose men like that?"

"I 'm afraid, my dear Miss Bramleigh," said he, with a mock air of
deploring--"I 'm afraid that in these degenerate days men are very prone
to like whatever gives them least trouble in everything, and if a woman
will condescend to talk to us on our own topics, and treat them pretty
much in our own way, we like it, simply because it diminishes the
distance between us, and saves us that uphill clamber we are obliged to
take when you insist upon our scrambling up to the high level you live
in."

"It is somewhat of an ignoble confession you have made there," said
she, haughtily.

"I know it--I feel it--I deplore it," said he, affectedly.

"If men will, out of mere indolence--no matter," said she, biting her
lip. "I 'll not say what I was going to say."

"Pray do. I beseech you finish what you have so well begun."

"Were I to do so, my Lord," said she, gravely, "it might finish
more than that. It might at least go some way towards finishing our
acquaintanceship. I 'm sorely afraid you 'd not have forgiven me had you
heard me out."

"I 'd never have forgiven myself, if I were the cause of it."

For some time they walked along in silence, and now the great house
came into view--its windows all glowing and glittering in the blaze of
a setting sun, while a faint breeze lazily moved the heavy folds of the
enormous flag that floated over the high tower.

"I call that a very princely place," said he, stopping to admire it.

"What a caprice to have built it in such a spot," said she. "The country
people were not far wrong when they called it Bishop's Folly."

"They gave it that name, did they?"

"Yes, my Lord