ick's absence, feeling that he was
enjoying an advantage which, although it was quite honorable, did not
appear so. What he had to do was to get an interview with Miss March as
soon as possible, and have that matter over. When he had been definitely
accepted or rejected, he would go away. And, whatever the result might
be, he would write to his rival as soon as he returned to the Springs,
and inform him of it, and would also explain how he had happened to be
here with Miss March. While he was engaged in planning these honorable
intentions, there came from the house Mrs Keswick's niece, with a basket
in one hand, and a pair of scissors in the other, and she immediately
applied herself to cutting some geraniums and chrysanthemums, which were
about the last flowers left blooming at that season in the garden. "Good
morning," said Croft, from the other end of the walk. "I am glad to see
you out so early."

"Good morning," she replied, with a look which indicated that she was
not at all glad to see him, "but I don't think it is early."

Croft had noticed on the preceding day that her coolness towards him
still continued, but it did not suit him to let her know that he
perceived it. He went up to her, and in a very friendly way remarked:
"There is something I wish very much you would tell me. What is your
name? It is very odd that during all the time I have been acquainted
with you I have never known your name."

"You must have taken an immense interest in it," she said, as she
snipped some dried leaves off a twig of geranium she had cut.

"It was not that I did not take any interest," said Croft, "but at first
your name never came forward, and I soon began to know you by the title
which your remarkable condition of wedlock gave you."

"And that is the name," said the lady, very decidedly, "by which I am to
be known in this house. I am very proud of my maiden name, but I am not
going to tell it to you for fear that some time you will use it."

"Oh!" ejaculated Mr Croft. "Then I suppose I am to continue even to
think of you as Mrs Null."

"You needn't think of me at all," said she, "but when you speak to me I
most certainly expect you to use that name. It was only by a sort of
accident that you came to know it was not my name." "I don't consider it
an accident at all," said Croft. "I look upon it as a piece of very
kindly confidence."

Miss Annie gave a little twist to her mouth, which seemed to indicate
that if she sp