young people were not visible from the sitting-room. Lady Latimer's
head was turned another way when Harry and Bessie met, but the instant
she missed her young charge she got up and looked out of the lattice.
The boles and sweeping branches of the great beeches hid the figures at
their feet, and Mrs. Musgrave, observing that dear Bessie was very fond
of the manor-garden, and had probably strolled into the wilderness, my
lady accepted the explanation and resumed her seat and her patience.

Meanwhile, Harry did not waste his precious opportunity. He had this
advantage, that when he saw Bessie he saw only the fair face that he
worshipped, and thought nothing of her adventitious belongings, while in
her absence he saw her surrounded by them, and himself set at a vast
conventional distance. He said that the four years since she left
Beechhurst seemed but as one day, now they were together again in the
old familiar places, and she replied that she was glad he thought so,
for she thought so too. "I still call the Forest home, though I do not
pine in exile. I return to it the day after to-morrow," she told him.

"Good little philosophical Bessie!" cried Harry, and relapsed into his
normal state of masculine superiority.

Then they talked of themselves, past, present, and future--now with
animation, now again with dropped and saddened voices. The afternoon sun
twinkled in the many-paned lattices of the old house in the background,
and the brook sang on as it had sung from immemorial days before a stone
of the house was built. Harry gazed rather mournfully at the ivied walls
during one of their sudden silences, and then he told Bessie that the
proprietor was ill, and the manor would have a new owner by and by.

"I trust he will not want to turn out my father and mother and pull it
down, but he is an improving landlord, and has built some excellent ugly
farmsteads on his other property. I have a clinging to it, and the
doctor says it would be well for me had I been born and bred in almost
any other place."

Bessie sighed, and said deprecatingly, "Harry, you look as strong as a
castle. If it was Mr. Christie they were always warning, I should not
wonder, but _you_!"

"But _me_! Little Christie looks as though a good puff of wind might
blow him away, and he is as tough as a pin-wire. I stand like a tower,
and they tell me the foundations are sinking. It sounds like a fable to
frighten me."

"Harry dear, it is not serious; don