rry him.

'I don't know how we were engaged, Ursula,' she once said, when we
were talking about Charlie and Lesbia in the twilight; 'we were at a
ball,--Lady Fitzherbert's,--and of course being a clergyman he did not
dance, but he took me into the conservatory and gave me a flower: I think
it was a rose. There were people all round us, and neither he nor I could
tell how it was done, but when he put me into the carriage I knew we were
somehow promised to each other, and when he came the next day he called
me Amy, and kissed me in the most quite matter-of-fact way. I often laugh
and tell him that he took it all, for granted.'

'Giles will come to-morrow,' I said to myself, as the first pale gleam
came over the eastern sky, 'and then I shall know all about it.' And I
fell asleep happily, and dreamt of Charlie, and I thought he was pelting
me with roses in the old vicarage garden.

'"And the evening and the morning were the first day,"' were my waking
words when I opened my eyes; for in the inward as well as the outward
creation, in hearts as well as worlds, all things become new under the
grace of such miracle. I was not the same woman that I had been
yesterday, neither should I ever be the same again. I seemed as though I
were in accord with all the harmonies of nature. 'And surely God saw that
it was good,' ought to be written upon all true and faithful earthly
attachments. I was expecting Mr. Hamilton, and yet it gave me a sort of
shock when I saw him coming up the road: he was walking very fast, with
his head bent, but his face was set in the direction of the cottage.

I sat down by the window and took out some work, but my hands trembled so
that I was compelled to lay it aside. It was not that I was afraid of
what he might say to me, for my heart had its welcome ready, but natural
womanly timidity caused the slight fluttering of my pulses.

The moments seemed long before I heard the click of the gate, before the
firm regular footsteps crunched the gravel walk; then came his knock at
my door, and I rose to greet him. But the moment I saw his face a sudden
anxiety seized me. What had happened? What made him look so pale and
embarrassed, so strangely unlike himself? This was not the greeting I
expected. This was not how we ought to meet on this morning of all
mornings.

As he shook hands with me quickly and rather nervously, he seemed to
avoid my eyes. He walked to the window, picked a spray of jasmine, and
began