ove there in Summer, with clotted
cream from her dairy, and we bought fresh-plucked wortleberries, and
stewed them in a hollow of the furzes, and ate them with ground biscuits
and the clotted cream iced, and thought it a luncheon for seraphs. Then
you dropped to the road round under the sand-heights--and meditated
railways!'

'Just a notion or two.'

'You have been very successful in America?'

'Successful; perhaps; we exclude extremes in our calculations of the
still problematical.'

'I am sure,' said she, 'you always have faith in your calculations.'

Her innocent archness dealt him a stab sharper than any he had known
since the day of his hearing of her engagement. He muttered of his
calculations being human; he was as much of a fool as other men--more!

'Oh! no,' said she.

'Positively.'

'I cannot think it.'

'I know it.'

'Mr. Redworth, you will never persuade me to believe it.'

He knocked a rising groan on the head, and rejoined 'I hope I may not
have to say so to-night.'

Diana felt the edge of the dart. 'And meditating railways, you scored
our poor land of herds and flocks; and night fell, and the moon sprang
up, and on you came. It was clever of you to find your way by the
moonbeams.'

'That's about the one thing I seem fit for!'

'But what delusion is this, in the mind of a man succeeding in
everything he does!' cried Diana, curious despite her wariness. 'Is
there to be the revelation of a hairshirt ultimately?--a Journal of
Confessions? You succeeded in everything you aimed at, and broke your
heart over one chance miss?'

'My heart is not of the stuff to break,' he said, and laughed off her
fortuitous thrust straight into it. 'Another cup, yes. I came...'

'By night,' said she, 'and cleverly found your way, and dined at The
Three Ravens, and walked to The Crossways, and met no ghosts.'

'On the contrary--or at least I saw a couple.'

'Tell me of them; we breed them here. We sell them periodically to the
newspapers!'

'Well, I started them in their natal locality. I saw them, going down
the churchyard, and bellowed after them with all my lungs. I wanted
directions to The Crossways; I had missed my way at some turning. In an
instant they were vapour.'

Diana smiled. 'It was indeed a voice to startle delicate apparitions! So
do roar Hyrcanean tigers. Pyramus and Thisbe--slaying lions! One of your
ghosts carried a loaf of bread, and dropped it in fright; one carried a
pound of fresh