d, and said he was sorry that he and she were already an
object of charity in Wychford.

"Oh, Guy," she protested, "you mustn't take poor Miss Verney too
seriously; but it was so sweet of her to want to set us up with an
income."

"Besides I _have_ got a hundred and fifty," said Guy.

"Oh, Guy dear, don't look so cross. Please don't be cross and dreadfully
in earnest about anything so stupid as money."

"I feel everybody will be pitying you for becoming engaged to a
penniless pretender like me," he sighed.

"Don't be so stupid, Guy. If they pity anybody, they'll pity you for
having a wife so utterly vague about practical things as I am. But I
won't be, Guy, when we're married."

"Oh, my own, I wish we were married now. God! I wish, I wish we were!"

He had clasped her to him, and she drew away. Guy begged her pardon for
swearing; but really she had drawn away because his eyes were so bright
and wild that she was momentarily afraid of him.

August kept wet and stormy; but on the nineteenth, the day before Guy's
birthday and the vigil of their betrothal, the sun came out with the
fierceness of late Summer. Pauline went with Margaret and Monica for a
walk in the corn-fields, because she and Guy, although it was one of
their trysting-days, had each resolved to keep it strictly empty of the
other's company, so that after a kind of fast they should meet on the
great day itself with a deeper welcome. Pauline made a wreath of poppies
for Margaret, and for Monica a wreath of cornflowers; but her sisters
could find no flower that became Pauline on this vigil, nor did she
mind, for to-morrow was beckoning to her across the wheat, and she
gladly went ungarlanded.

"I wonder why I feel as if this were our last walk together," said
Margaret.

"Oh, Margaret, how can you say a horrid thing like that?" Pauline
exclaimed; and to-morrow drooped before her in the dusty path.

"No, darling, it's not horrid. But, oh, you don't know how much I mind
that in a way the Rectory as it always has been will no longer be the
Rectory."

Pauline vowed she would go home, not caring on whose wheat she trampled,
if Margaret talked any more like that.

"I can't think why you want to make me sad," she protested. "What
difference, after all, will this announcement of our engagement bring? I
shall wear a ring, that's all!"

"But everybody will know you belong to Guy," said Margaret, "instead of
to all of us."

"Oh, my dears, my dears," Pau