Oh, it was a pretty, subtle piece of nature, and each sex played its
part. Bold advances of the man, with internal fear to offend, mock
retreats of the girl, with internal throbs of complacency, and life
invested with a new and growing charm to both. Leaving this pretty little
pastime to glide along the flowery path that beautifies young lives to
its inevitable climax, we go to a matter more prosaic, yet one that
proved a source of strange and stormy events.

Hope had hardly started the farm when Bartley sent him off to Belgium--TO
STUDY COAL MINES.

CHAPTER VII.

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.

Mr. Hope left his powerful opera-glass with Mary Bartley. One day that
Walter called she was looking through it at the landscape, and handed it
to him. He admired its power. Mary told him it had saved her life once.

"Oh," said he, "how could that be?"

Then she told him how Hope had seen her drowning, a mile off, with it,
and ridden a bare-backed steed to her rescue.

"God bless him!" cried Walter. "He is our best friend. Might I borrow
this famous glass?"

"Oh," said Mary, "I am not going into any more streams; I am not so brave
now as I used to be."

"Please lend it me, for all that."

"Of course I will, if you wish it."

Strange to say, after this, whether Mary walked out or rode out, she very
often met Mr. Walter Clifford. He was always delighted and surprised. She
was surprised three times, and said so, and after that she came to lower
her lashes and blush, but not to start. Each meeting was a pure accident,
no doubt, only she foresaw the inevitable occurrence.

They talked about everything in the world except what was most on their
minds. Their soft tones and expressive eyes supplied that little
deficiency.

One day he caught her riding on her little Arab. The groom fell
behind directly. After they had ridden some distance in silence,
Walter broke out:

"How beautifully you ride!"

"Me!" cried Mary. "Why, I never had a lesson in my life."

"That accounts for it. Let a lady alone, and she does everything more
gracefully than a man; but let some cad undertake to teach her, she
distrusts herself and imitates the snob. If you could only see the women
in Hyde Park who have been taught to ride, and compare them with
yourself!"

"I should learn humility."

"No; it would make you vain, if anything could."

"You seem inclined to do me that good turn. Come, pray, what do these
poor ladies do to offend y