and there. She could not
get his meaning into her sight, and she sought, by looking hard, to
understand it better; much as when some solitary maiden lady, passing
into her bedchamber in the hours of darkness, beholds--tradition telling
us she has absolutely beheld foot of burglar under bed; and lo! she
stares, and, cunningly to moderate her horror, doubts, yet cannot but
believe that there is a leg, and a trunk, and a head, and two terrible
arms, bearing pistols, to follow. Sick, she palpitates; she compresses
her trepidation; she coughs, perchance she sings a bar or two of an
aria. Glancing down again, thrice horrible to her is it to discover that
there is no foot! For had it remained, it might have been imagined a
harmless, empty boot. But the withdrawal has a deadly significance of
animal life....

In like manner our stricken Annette perceived the object; so did she
gradually apprehend the fact of her being asked for Tinman's bride, and
she could not think it credible. She half scented, she devised her
plan of escape from another single mention of it. But on her father's
remarking, with a shuffle, frightened by her countenance, "Don't listen
to what I said, Netty. I won't paint him blacker than he is"--then
Annette was sure she had been proposed for by Mr. Tinman, and she
fancied her father might have revolved it in his mind that there
was this means of keeping Tinman silent, silent for ever, in his own
interests.

"It was not true, when you told Mr. Tinman I was engaged, papa," she
said.

"No, I know that. Mart Tinman only half-kind of hinted. Come, I say!
Where's the unmarried man wouldn't like to have a girl like you, Netty!
They say he's been rejected all round a circuit of fifteen miles; and
he's not bad-looking, neither--he looks fresh and fair. But I thought
it as well to let him know he might get me at a disadvantage, but he
couldn't you. Now, don't think about it, my love."

"Not if it is not necessary, papa," said Annette; and employed her
familiar sweetness in persuading him to go to bed, as though he were the
afflicted one requiring to be petted.

CHAPTER VII

Round under the cliffs by the sea, facing South, are warm seats in
winter. The sun that shines there on a day of frost wraps you as in
a mantle. Here it was that Mr. Herbert Fellingham found Annette, a
chalk-block for her chair, and a mound of chalk-rubble defending her
from the keen-tipped breath of the east, now and then shadowing th