'em,"
said Arbuthnot. "His name is Annesley," said Anderson. "I never saw him
in my life, but that's what Sir Magnus says. He has done something
awfully disreputable. I don't quite understand what it is, but it's
something which ought to make him unfit to be her husband. Nobody knows
the world better than Sir Magnus, and he says that it is so." "Nobody
does know the world better than Sir Magnus," said Arbuthnot. And so that
conversation was brought to an end.

One day soon after this he caught her walking in the garden. Her mother
and Miss Abbot were still out with Lady Mountjoy in the carriage, and
Sir Magnus had retired after the fatigue of his ride to sleep for half
an hour before dinner. "All alone, Miss Mountjoy?" he said.

"Yes, alone, Mr. Anderson. I'm never in better company."

"So I think; but then if I were here you wouldn't be all alone, would
you?"

"Not if you were with me."

"That's what I mean. But yet two people may be alone, as regards the
world at large. Mayn't they?"

"I don't understand the nicety of language well enough to say. We used
to have a question among us when we were children whether a wild beast
could howl in an empty cavern. It's the same sort of thing."

"Why shouldn't he?"

"Because the cavern would not be empty if the wild beast were in it.
Did you ever see a girl bang an egg against a wall in a stocking, and
then look awfully surprised because she had smashed it?"

"I don't understand the joke."

"She had been told she couldn't break an egg in an empty stocking. Then
she was made to look in, and there was the broken egg for her pains. I
don't know what made me tell you that story."

"It's a very good story. I'll get Miss Abbott to do it to-night. She
believes everything."

"And everybody? Then she's a happy woman."

"I wish you'd believe everybody."

"So I do;--nearly everybody. There are some inveterate liars whom nobody
can believe."

"I hope I am not regarded as one."

"You? certainly not. If anybody were to speak of you as such behind your
back no one would take your part more loyally than I. But nobody would."

"That's something, at any rate. Then you do believe that I love you?"

"I believe that you think so."

"And that I don't know my own heart?"

"That's very common, Mr. Anderson. I wasn't quite sure of my own heart
twelve months ago, but I know it now." He felt that his hopes ran very
low when this was said. She had never before spoken to him of hi