to see her the next morning, he found her in a mixed
mood. Half-a-dozen times during the night she had declined to marry
him in a painful scene, but just as often her imagination would run on
into the unknown life she would have to lead with him. She saw herself
in white satin and lace and pearls, a slender figure at the head of a
long dining-table, interesting to everybody, and Dan was at the foot,
looking quite distinguished in evening dress, with his glossy black
hair and wonderful clear skin. She had gathered the nicest people in
the neighbourhood about her, and on her right there was a shadowy
person, a man of mark, and knightly, who delighted in her
conversation.

When she came downstairs to receive Dan she was coughing, and he
showed his devotion by being greatly concerned about her health. He
said she must have port wine and a tonic, and be out in the air as
much as possible, and suggested that they should go for a walk at once
as it was a lovely day, though still wet under foot.

"I would not ask you to walk if I had a carriage to offer you," he
said, "for I hate to see a delicate lady on foot in the mud. But you
shall have your carriage yet, please God, all in good time!"

"Where shall we go?" said Beth when they left the house.

"Oh, anywhere," he answered. "Take me to one of your own favourite
haunts."

She thought of the Fairholm cliffs for a moment, but felt that they
were sacred to many recollections with which she would not care to
associate this new experience. "I'll show you the chalybeate spring,"
she said.

They turned out of Orchard Street, and went down the hill to the Beck,
a broad, clear, shallow rivulet, that came round a sharp green curve
between high banks, well wooded with old trees, all in their heavy,
dark-green, summer foliage. As they crossed the rustic wooden bridge
Beth paused a little to look up at the trees and love them, and down
into the clear water at the scarlet sticklebacks heading up stream.
Her companion looked at her in surprise when she stopped, and then
followed the direction of her eyes. All he saw, however, was a shallow
stream, a green bank, and some trees.

"This is not very interesting," he observed.

Beth made no reply, but led the way up the hill on the other side,
and, to the right, passed a row of cottages with long gardens at the
back running down to the brow of the bank that overhung the Beck. In
most of these cottages she was an object of suspicion beca