hosen twilight. But, I say, you fellows, keep the secret, will you? she
don't want her family to get wind of it, because they're bothering her
to marry that old cove, Mount Trefoil, with his sixty years and his
broad acres, and wouldn't let her take anybody else if they knew it;
she's under age, you see."

"But how did she know you were L. C.?"

"Fairlie told her, and the dear little vain thing immediately thought it
was an indirect proposal to herself, and answered it; of course I didn't
undeceive her. She _raffoles_ of me--it'll be almost too much of a good
thing, I'm afraid. She's deuced prudish, too, much more than I should
have thought _she_'d have been; but I vow she'd only let me kiss her
hand, and that was gloved."

"I hate prudes," said Gower; "they've always much more devilry than the
open-hearted ones. Videlicet--here's your young lady stiff enough only
to give you her hand to kiss, and yet she'll lower herself to a
clandestine correspondence and stolen interviews--a condescension I
don't think I should admire in _my_ wife."

"Love, my dear fellow, oversteps all--what d'ye call 'em?--boundaries,"
said Belle, languidly. "What a bore! I shall never be able to wear this
coat again, it's so ingrained with dust; little puss, why didn't she
wait till it was cooler?"

"Did you fix your marriage-day?" asked Tom, rather contemptuously.

"Yes, I was very weak!" sighed Belle; "but you see she's uncommonly
pretty, and there's Mount Trefoil and lots of men, and, I fancy, that
dangerous fellow Fairlie, after her; so we hurried matters. We've been
making love to one another all these three months, you know, and fixed
it so soon as Thursday week. Of course she blushed, and sighed, and put
her handkerchief to her eyes, and all the rest of it, _en regle_; but
she consented, and I'm to be sacrificed. But not a word about it, my
dear fellows! The Vanes are to be kept in profoundest darkness, and, to
lull suspicion, I'm not to go there scarcely at all until then, and when
I do, she'll let me know when she will be out, and I'm to call on her
mother then. She'll write to me, and put the letters in a hollow tree in
the wood, where I'm to leave my answers, or, rather, send 'em; catch me
going over that road again! Don't give me joy, old boys. I know I'm
making a holocaust of myself, but deuce take me if I can help it--she is
so deuced pretty!"

Fairlie was not at mess that night. Nobody knew where he was. I learnt,
long month