up by the
bedside in her dainty white nightgown. But Winnie caught at her
meaning with the preternatural sharpness of the girl brought up in
immediate contact with the landed interest. "Oh, he's of age," she
answered quickly, with a knowing nod. "He's come into the
property; he has nobody on earth but himself to consult about his
domestic arrangements."

Dolly was young; Dolly was pretty; Dolly's smile won the world;
Dolly was still at the sweetest and most susceptible of ages.
Walter Brydges was well off; Walter Brydges was handsome; Walter
Brydges had all the glamour of a landed estate, and an Oxford
education. He was a young Greek god in a Norfolk shooting-jacket.
Moreover, he was a really good and pleasant young fellow. What
wonder, therefore, if before a week was out, Dolly was very really
and seriously in love with him? And what wonder if Walter Brydges
in turn, caught by that maiden glance, was in love with Dolly? He
had every excuse, for she was lithe, and beautiful, and a joyous
companion; besides being, as the lady's maid justly remarked, a
perfect lady.

One day, after Dolly had been a fortnight at Upcombe, the Compsons
gave a picnic in the wild Combe undercliff. 'Tis a broken wall of
chalk, tumbled picturesquely about in huge shattered masses, and
deliciously overgrown with ferns and blackthorn and golden clusters
of close-creeping rock-rose. Mazy paths thread tangled labyrinths of
fallen rock, or wind round tall clumps of holly-bush and bramble.
They lighted their fire under the lee of one such buttress of broken
cliff, whose summit was festooned with long sprays of clematis, or
"old man's beard," as the common west-country name expressively
phrases it. Thistledown hovered on the basking air. There they sat
and drank their tea, couched on beds of fern or propped firm against
the rock; and when tea was over, they wandered off, two and two,
ostensibly for nothing, but really for the true business of the
picnic--to afford the young men and maidens of the group some chance
of enjoying, unspied, one another's society.

Dolly and Walter Brydges strolled off by themselves toward the
rocky shore. There Walter showed her where a brook bubbled clear
from the fountain-head; by its brink, blue veronicas grew, and tall
yellow loosestrife, and tasselled purple heads of great English
eupatory. Bending down to the stream he picked a little bunch of
forget-me-nots, and handed them to her. Dolly pretended
un