--that you
have taken a tremendous fancy to all of us. I felt it just now, after
supper. I was watching you and--oh! well, I knew what you were feeling
about my father and mother; and it seemed to be just what I should have
liked you to feel. But I don't think I would give _all_ my money to the
hospitals, if I were you. Not without thinking it over a bit, first. Wait
until we get to Canada and see--how we get on."

"You don't trust my impulses," I said.

She laughed. "Wait till to-morrow anyway," she replied.

And as she spoke I heard far away, across the Park, the sound of the
stable-clock at the Hall, striking twelve. The artificial sound of it was
mellowed and altered by distance; as different from that theatrical first
striking I had noticed in the exciting atmosphere of the crowd, as was my
present state of mind from that in which I had expectantly waited the
coming of romance....

"To-morrow begins now," I said.

"And I have to be up before six," she added, in the formal voice she knew
so well how to assume.

I felt as though she had by that one return to civility cancelled all that
she said, and as we turned back to the house, I began to wonder whether
the promise of my probation was as assured as I had, a minute earlier, so
confidently believed.

We were nearly at the little porch that would for ever be associated in my
mind with the fumbling figure of Frank Jervaise, when she said,

"One moment. I'll get you something," and left me standing in almost
precisely the same spot from which I had gazed up at her window the night
before.

She returned almost immediately, but it was not until we were inside the
house and she had lighted my candle that she gave me the "something,"
pressing it into my hand with a sudden delicious, girlish embarrassment.

She was gone before I recognised that the precious thing she had given me
was a sprig of Rosemary.

POSTSCRIPT

THE TRUE STORY

It was by the merest accident that we gathered that delightful piece of
information--on our first trip to England, not quite three years after we
were married.

I did not know that "_The Mulberry Bush_" had been revived for a few weeks
as a stop-gap, until we saw the boards outside the theatre. Anne insisted
that we should go in, and the arbiters of coincidence ordained that I
should take seats in the stalls immediately behind one of those
well-informed society women who know the truth about everything.

We were somew