d
informed him, he now was unaccountably inflamed by a desire to cultivate
the acquaintance of the valued companion of his deceased brother's youth.

He opened negotiations by the gift of a barrel of oysters, sent down
from Wilton's, with an appropriate and graceful accompanying note. Mr.
Gisburne was surprised, but not naturally otherwise than pleased by the
attention. Next came a box of cigars, which again were shortly followed
by two brace of pheasants purporting to be of Herbert's own shooting, but
which, as a matter of fact, he had purchased in Vigo Street.

This munificent succession of gifts reaped at length the harvest for
which they had been sown. In his third letter of grateful acknowledgment
for his young friend's kind remembrance of him, Mr. Gisburne, with some
diffidence, for Tripton Rectory was neither lively nor remarkably
commodious, suggested how great the pleasure would be were his friend to
run down to him for a couple of days or so; he had nothing, in truth, to
offer him but a bachelor's quarters and a hearty welcome; there was next
to no attraction beyond a pretty rural village and a choral daily
service; but still, if he cared to come, Mr. Gisburne need not say how
delighted he would be, etc., etc.

It is not too much to say that the friend jumped at it. On the shortest
possible notice he arrived, bag and baggage, professing himself charmed
with the bachelor's quarters; and, burning with an insatiable desire to
behold the rurality of the village, to listen to the beauty and the
harmony of the daily choral performances, he took up his abode in the
clergyman's establishment; and the very next morning he sent a rural
villager over to Shadonake with a half-crown for himself and a note to be
given to Miss Miller the very first time she walked or rode out alone.
This note was duly delivered, and that same afternoon Beatrice met her
lover by appointment in an empty lime-kiln up among the chalk hills. This
romantic rendezvous was, however, discontinued shortly, owing to the fact
of Mrs. Miller having become suspicious of her daughter's frequent and
solitary walks, and insisting on sending out Geraldine and her governess
with her.

A few mornings later a golden chance presented itself. Mr. and Mrs.
Miller went away for the night to dine and sleep at a distant country
house. Beatrice had not been invited to go with them. She did not venture
to ask her lover to the house he had been forbidden to enter, but