open sea, touching at all the most lovely
capes and promontories, and is never driven on shore by stress of
weather! What a happy sailor he must be!"

"I think he is happy, and that he makes others so."

"He ought to be made an admiral at once But we shall hear some day of
his coming to a terrible shipwreck."

"Oh, I hope not!"

"He will return home in desperate plight, with only two planks left
together, with all his glory and beauty broken and crumpled to pieces
against some rock that he has despised in his pride."

"Why do you prophesy such terrible things for him?"

"I mean that he will get married."

"Get married! of course he will. That's just what we all want. You
don't call that a shipwreck; do you?"

"It's the sort of shipwreck that these very gallant barks have to
encounter."

"You don't mean that he'll marry a disagreeable wife!"

"Oh, no; not in the least. I only mean to say that like other sons of
Adam, he will have to strike his colours. I dare say, if the truth
were known, he has done so already."

"I am sure he has not."

"I don't at all ask to know his secrets, and I should look upon you
as a very bad sister if you told them."

"But I am sure he has not got any,--of that kind."

"Would he tell you if he had?"

"Oh, I hope so; any serious secret. I am sure he ought, for I am
always thinking about him."

"And would you tell him your secrets?"

"I have none."

"But when you have, will you do so?"

"Will I? Well, yes; I think so. But a girl has no such secret," she
continued to say, after pausing for a moment. "None, generally, at
least, which she tells, even to herself, till the time comes in
which she tells it to all whom she really loves." And then there was
another pause for a moment.

"I am not quite so sure of that," said Miss Furnival. After which the
gentlemen came into the drawing-room.

Augustus Staveley had gone to work in a manner which he conceived to
be quite systematic, having before him the praiseworthy object of
making a match between Felix Graham and Sophia Furnival. "By George,
Graham," he had said, "the finest girl in London is coming down to
Noningsby; upon my word I think she is."

"And brought there expressly for your delectation, I suppose."

"Oh no, not at all; indeed, she is not exactly in my style; she is
too,--too,--too--in point of fact, too much of a girl for me. She has
lots of money, and is very clever, and all that kind of thing."

"I never k