oudy with
disappointment, and at the same time her eyes were wet with tears of
some sweeter feeling. Dolly, standing behind the supper-table, looked
from the one to the other as the two came in.

"It is all settled, Dolly," said Mr. Shubrick.

And I think he would have taken his betrothal kiss, then and there, had
not Dolly's glance been so shy and shrinking that she flashed at him.
She was standing quietly and upright; there was no awkwardness in her
demeanour; it was the look of her eyes that laid bans upon Sandie. He
restrained himself; paid her no particular attention during supper;
talked a great deal, but on entirely indifferent subjects; and if he
played the lover to anybody, certainly it was to Mrs. Copley.

"He is a good young man, I believe," said Mrs. Copley, making so much
of an admission as she and Dolly went upstairs.

"O mother," said Dolly, half laughing and half vexed, "you say that
just because he has been entertaining you!"

"Well," returned Mrs. Copley. "I like to be entertained. Don't you find
him entertaining?"

Mr. Shubrick kept up the same tactics for several days; behaving
himself in the house very much as he had done ever since he had come to
it. And out of the house, though he and Dolly took long walks and held
long talks together; he was very cool and undemonstrative. He would let
her get accustomed to him. And certainly in these conversations he was
entertaining. Walking, or sitting on the bank under some old beech or
oak tree, he had endless things to tell Dolly; things to which she
listened as eagerly as ever Desdemona did to Othello; stories out of
which, avoid personalities as he would, she could not but gain, step by
step, new knowledge of the story-teller. And hour by hour Dolly's
respect for him and appreciation of him grew. Little by little she
found how thorough his education was, and how fine his accomplishments.
Especially as a draughtsman. Easily and often, in telling her of some
place or of some naval engagement, Sandie would illustrate for her with
any drawing materials that came to hand; making spirited and masterly
sketches with a few strokes of his hand, it might be on paper, or on a
bit of bark, or on the ground even.

"Ah," said Dolly one day, watching him, "I cannot do that! I can do
something, but I cannot do that."

"What can you do?" inquired Sandie.

"I can copy. I can take down the lines of a face, or of a bridge, or a
house, when I see it before me; but I