ve been a young
lady in Society, and you a gentleman that had had an accident."

"It would have happened just the same, _I_ believe. Because why? I had
_seen_ you. At least, it _might_ have."

"It _has_ happened, and must be looked in the face. Now whatever you
do, for Heaven's sake, don't go talking to papa and being penitent, till
I give you leave."

"What should I be able to say to him? _I_ don't know. I can't justify my
actions--as the World goes...."

"Why not?"

"Nobody would hold a man blameless, in my circumstances, who made an
offer of marriage to a young lady under...."

"It's invidious to talk about people's ages."

"I wasn't going to say twenty-one. I was going to say under her father's
roof...."

"Nobody ever makes offers of marriage on the top of anybody's father's
roof. Besides, you never made any offer, strictly speaking. You
said...."

"I said that if I had my choice I would have chosen it all as it now is,
only to hear your voice in the dark, rather than to be without it and
have all the eyes of ... didn't I say Argus?"

"Yes--you said Argus. But that was a _facon-de-parler_; at least I hope
so, for the sake of the Hypothesis.... Oh dear!--what nonsense we two
are talking...." Some silence; otherwise the _status quo_ remained
unchanged. Then he said:--"_I_ wonder if it's all a dream and we shall
wake." And she replied: "Not both--that's absurd!" But she made it more
so by adding:--"Promise you'll tell me your dream when we wake, and I'll
tell you mine." He assented:--"All right!--but don't let's wake yet."

By now the sun was sinking in a flame of gold, and every little rabbit's
shadow in the fern was as long as the tallest man's two hours since, and
longer. The level glare was piercing the sheltered secrets of the
beechwoods, and choosing from them ancient tree-trunks capriciously, to
turn to sudden fires against the depths of hidden purple beyond--the
fringe of the mantle the vanguard of night was weaving for the hills.
Not a dappled fallow-deer in the coolest shade but had its chance of a
robe of glory for a little moment--not a bird so sober in its plumage
but became, if only it flew near enough to Heaven, a spark against the
blue. And the long, unhesitating rays were not so busy with the world
without, but that one of them could pry in at the five-light window at
the west end of the Jacobean drawing-room at the Towers, and reach the
marble Ceres the Earl's grandfather brought from At