keep you now, else I should like to show you the
Hermitage. Did you ever see it?"

"No, sir."

"This is the walk where we turn up to it. But we must not go now. I'll
show it you some other time, if you'd like to see it."

"Yes, please, sir."

"Do you always come back this way in the evening, or are you afraid to
come so lonely a road?"

"Oh no, sir, it's never late; I always set out by eight o'clock, and
it's so light now in the evening. My aunt would be angry with me if I
didn't get home before nine."

"Perhaps Craig, the gardener, comes to take care of you?"

A deep blush overspread Hetty's face and neck. "I'm sure he doesn't;
I'm sure he never did; I wouldn't let him; I don't like him," she said
hastily, and the tears of vexation had come so fast that before she had
done speaking a bright drop rolled down her hot cheek. Then she felt
ashamed to death that she was crying, and for one long instant her
happiness was all gone. But in the next she felt an arm steal round her,
and a gentle voice said, "Why, Hetty, what makes you cry? I didn't mean
to vex you. I wouldn't vex you for the world, you little blossom. Come,
don't cry; look at me, else I shall think you won't forgive me."

Arthur had laid his hand on the soft arm that was nearest to him, and
was stooping towards Hetty with a look of coaxing entreaty. Hetty lifted
her long dewy lashes, and met the eyes that were bent towards her with a
sweet, timid, beseeching look. What a space of time those three moments
were while their eyes met and his arms touched her! Love is such a
simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl
of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first
opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young
unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that
touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets
that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with
ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places. While Arthur
gazed into Hetty's dark beseeching eyes, it made no difference to him
what sort of English she spoke; and even if hoops and powder had been
in fashion, he would very likely not have been sensible just then that
Hetty wanted those signs of high breeding.

But they started asunder with beating hearts: something had fallen on
the ground with a rattling noise; it was Hetty's basket; all her little
workwoman's matters were