ar old;" he did not drop off to sleep hoping
that Beverley might break down or "Nightcap" spring a back sinew; and,
stranger than all, he actually could awake of a morning and not wish
himself the Viscount Lackington. Accustomed as he was to tell Lizzy
everything, to ask her advice about all that arose, and her explanation
for all that puzzled him, he could not help communicating this new
phenomenon of his temperament, frankly acknowledging that it was a
mystery he could not fathom.

"Nothing seems ever to puzzle you, Lizzy,"--he had learned to call her
Lizzy some time back,--"so just tell me what can you make of it? Ain't
it strange?"

"It _is_ strange," said she, with a faint smile, in which a sort of sad
meaning mingled.

"So strange," resumed he, "that had any one said to me, 'Beecher, you
'll spend a couple of months in a little German inn, with nothing to
do, nothing to see, and, what's more, it will not bore you,' I 'd
have answered, 'Take you fifty to one in hundreds on the double
event,--thousands if you like it better,'--and see, hang me if I should
n't have lost!"

"Perhaps not. If you had a heavy wager on the matter, it is likely you
would not have come."

"Who knows! Everything is Fate in this world. Ah, you may laugh; but it
is, though. What else, I ask you--what brings you here just now?--why am
I walking along the river with you beside me?"

"Partly, because, I hope, you find it pleasant," said she, with a droll
gravity, while something in her eyes seemed to betoken that her own
thoughts amused her.

"There must be more than that," said he, thoughtfully, for he felt the
question a knotty one, and rather liked to show that he did not skulk
the encounter with such difficulties.

"Partly, perhaps, because it pleases _me_," said she, in the same quiet
tone.

He shook his head doubtingly; he had asked for an explanation, and
neither of these supplied that want. "At all events, Lizzy, there is one
thing you will admit,--if it is Fate, one can't help it,--eh?"

"If you mean by that that you must walk along here at my side, whether
you will or not, just try, for experiment's sake, if you could not cross
over the stream and leave me to go back alone."

"Leave _you_ to go back alone!" cried he, upon whom the last words were
ever the most emphatic. "But why so, Lizzy; are you angry with me?--are
you weary of me?"

"No, I 'm not angry with you," said she, gently.

"Wearied, then--tired of me--bored