de and stood
there uncovered, as usual, but this time he did not withdraw
his eyes from her face. And when he spoke it was in a new
tone, very pleasant, though laying aside a certain distance
and form with which he had hitherto addressed her.

'Do you know,' he said, 'I begin to think I have known you in
a former state of existence?'

'What sort of a person were you in a former state, Mr. Rollo?'

'I see the knowledge was not mutual. I am sorry.--This is a
pleasant place!'

'This identical grey rock?'

'Don't you think so?'--in a tone which assumed the proposition.

'Very,' said Wych Hazel with a demure face;--'I do not know
which abound most--the pleasures of Hope, Memory, or
Imagination. But I thought perhaps you meant the mountain.'

'The pleasures of the Present, then, you do not perceive?'
said Mr. Rollo, peering about very busily among the trees and
rocks in his vicinity.

'Poor Hope and Imagination!' said Miss Hazel,--'must they be
banished to the "former state?" Memory does hold a sort of
middle ground.'

'There isn't much of that sort of ground here,' said Mr.
Rollo; 'we are on a pretty steep pitch of the hill. Don't you
like this wilderness? You want a gun though--or a pencil--to
give you the sense that you have something to do in the
wilderness.'

'Yes!' said Miss Hazel--'so Englishmen say: "What a nice day it
is!--let's go out and kill something." '

There was a good deal of amusement and keenness in his sideway
glance, as he demurely asked her 'if she didn't know how to
shoot?' But Wych Hazel, with a slight gesture of her silky
curls, merely remarked that she had pencils in her pocket--if
he wanted one.

'Thank you--have you paper too?'

'Plenty.'

'That I may not seem intolerably rude,' said he, extending his
hand for the paper,--'will you make one sketch while I make
another? We will limit the time, as they did at the London
Sketch Club.'

'O, I shall not think it even tolerably rude. But all my paper
is in this book.'

'To secure the conditions, I must tear a leaf out.--How will
that do?'

'Very well,' she said with a wee flitting of colour,--'if you
will secure my conditions too.'

'What are they?' As he spoke he tore the leaf out and
proceeded to accommodate himself with a pamphlet for a drawing
board.

'You had no right to the leaf till you heard them!' she cried
jumping up. 'I shall take care how I bargain with you again,
Mr. Rollo.'

'Not safe?' said he smiling. 'Bu