ough of a few days
and went to Sorrento. I got there one lovely afternoon, about three
weeks after you had gone. Sea and sky and the world generally were
flooded with light and colour, so as I have never seen them anywhere
else, it seems to me. You know how it is."

"Yes, I know Sorrento," said Dolly. But just then, an English bank
under English oaks seemed as good to the girl as ever an Italian
paradise. That, naturally, she did not show. "I know Sorrento," she
said quietly.

"And you know the Thayers' villa. I found Christina and Mr. St. Leger
sitting on the green near the house, under an orange tree--symbolical;
and the air was sweet with a thousand other things. I felt it with a
kind of oppression, for the mental prospect was by no means so
delicious."

"No," said Dolly. "And sometimes that feeling of contrast makes one
very keen to see all the lovely things outside of one."

"Do _you_ know that?" said Mr. Shubrick.

"Yes. I know it"

"One can only know it by experience. What experience can you have had,
my Dolly, to let you feel it?"

Dolly turned her eyes on him without speaking. She was thinking of
Venice at midnight under the moon, and a sail, and a wine-shop. Tell
him? No, indeed, never!

"You are not ready to let me know?" said he, smiling. "How long first
must it be?"

"It isn't anything you need know," said Dolly, looking away. But with
that the question flashed upon her, would he not have to know? had he
not a right? "Please go on," she said hurriedly.

"I can go on now easier than I could then," he said with a half laugh.
"I sat down with them, and purposely brought the conversation upon the
theme of my trouble. It came quite naturally, _apropos_ of a case of a
broken engagement which was much talked of just then; and I started my
question. Suppose one or the other of the parties had discovered that
the engagement was a mistake? They gave it dead against me; all of
them; Mrs. Thayer had come out by that time. They were unanimous in
deciding that pledges made must be kept, at all hazards."

"I think that is the general view," said Dolly.

"It is not yours?"

"I never thought much about it. But I think people ought always and
everywhere to be true.--That is nothing to kiss my hand for," Dolly
added with the pretty flush which was coming and going so often this
afternoon.

"You will let me judge of that."

"I didn't think you were that sort of person."

"What sort of person?"

"One of