ced that _he_ cared enough for Anastasia to make her
an offer, then he was sure that she would accept him.

It was true that he could not, on the spur of the moment, recollect many
instances in which she had openly evinced a predilection for him, but he
was conscious that she thought well of him, and she was no doubt too
modest to make manifest, feelings which she could never under ordinary
circumstances hope to see returned. Yet he certainly _had_ received
encouragement of a quiet and unobtrusive kind, quite sufficient to
warrant the most favourable conclusions. He remembered how many, many
times their eyes had met when they were in one another's company; she
must certainly have read the tenderness which had inspired his glances,
and by answering them she had given perhaps the greatest encouragement
that true modesty would permit. How delicate and infinitely gracious
her acknowledgment had been, how often had she looked at him as it were
furtively, and then, finding his passionate gaze upon her, had at once
cast her own eyes shyly to the ground! And in his reveries he took not
into reckoning, the fact that through these later weeks he had scarcely
ever taken his gaze off her, so long as she was in the same room with
him. It would have been strange if their eyes had not sometimes met,
because she must needs now and then obey that impulse which forces us to
look at those who are looking at us. Certainly, he meditated, her eyes
had given him encouragement, and then she had accepted gratefully a
bunch of lilies of the valley which he said lightly had been given him,
but which he had really bought _ad hoc_ at Carisbury. But, again, he
ought perhaps to have reflected that it would have been difficult for
her to refuse them. How could she have refused them? How could any
girl under the circumstances do less than take with thanks a few lilies
of the valley? To decline them would be affectation; by declining she
might attach a false and ridiculous significance to a kindly act. Yes,
she had encouraged him in the matter of the lilies, and if she had not
worn some of them in her bosom, as he had hoped she might, that, no
doubt, was because she feared to show her preference too markedly. He
had noticed particularly the interest she had shown when a bad cold had
confined him for a few days to the house, and this very evening had he
not heard that she missed him when he was absent even for a night? He
smiled at this thoug