with thee!'"

Violet Northimus did not reply. She wore the modesty of a victor. She
was ready at any moment to meet six hundred such as he; and she was not
to be put out, after the discomfiture of her enemy, by a joke.

Then they slowly rolled and grated out of the station, and by-and-by the
swinging pace increased, and they were out in the clearer light and the
fresher air, with a windy April sky showing flashes of blue from time to
time. They went down through a succession of thoroughly English looking
landscapes--quiet valleys with red-tiled cottages in them, bare heights
green with the young corn, long stretches of brown and almost leafless
woods, with the rough banks outside all starred with the pale, clear
primrose. There was one in that carriage who had had no lack of flowers
that spring--flowers brought by many a kindly hand to brighten the look
of the sick room; but surely it was something more wonderful to see the
flowers themselves, growing here in this actual and outside world which
had been to him for many a weary week but a dimly imagined dreamland.
There were primroses under the hedges, primroses along the high banks,
primroses shining pale and clear within the leafless woods, among the
russet leaves of the previous autumn. And then the life and motion of
the sky, the southwesterly winds, the black and lowering clouds
suddenly followed by a wild and dazzling gleam of sunlight, the grays
and purples flying on and leaving behind them a welcome expanse of
shining April blue.

The day was certainly squally enough, and might turn to showers; but the
gusts of wind that blew through the carriage were singularly sweet and
mild; and again and again Mr. Drummond, who had been raised by all this
new life and light into the very highest spirits, declared with much
solemnity that he could already detect the smell of the salt sea air.
They had their quarrels of course. It pleased a certain young lady to
treat the south coast of England with much supercilious contempt. You
would have imagined from her talk that there was something criminal in
one's living even within twenty miles of the bleak downs, the shabby
precipices, and the muddy sea which, according to her, were the only
recognizable features of our southern shores. She would not admit indeed
that there was any sea at all there; there was only churned chalk. Was
it fair to say, even under the exasperation of continual goading, that
the Isle of Wight was only a