m the tide of the botany.
The band was playing. Erica, half listening to the music and half
attending to his talk, looked dreamily peaceful; surely now was the
time! But all at once the clear eyes looked up with their perfectly
wide-awake interest, and she exclaimed:

"I do wish the Farrants would come! They certainly meant to be here. I
can't make it out."

Leslie patiently talked about the member for Greyshot; but, just when
he hoped he was quit of the subject, Erica gave an exclamation of such
unfeigned delight that a consuming envy took possession of him.

"Oh, there he is! And Ralph and Dolly, too!"

And in a moment the Oakdene party had joined them, and Leslie saw that
his chances for that day were over. Before long he had made his escape,
leaving the grounds not moodily, but with the light of a new and eager
determination in his eye.

Erica, returning from the flower show late in the afternoon, found a
note awaiting her, and opened it unconcernedly enough on her way up to
her room. But the first glance at it brought a glow of color to her face
and a nameless fear to her heart. She ran on quickly, locked her door,
and by the ruddy firelight read in a sort of dumb dismay her first offer
of marriage. This then was the meaning of it all. This was the cause of
his hurried return to England; this had brought her the long talks which
had been so pleasant, yes, strangely, unaccountably pleasant. Yet, for
all that, she knew well enough that she had nothing to give in return
for the love revealed in every word of the letter. She liked him, liked
to talk to him, thought him clever and interesting, but that was all.
His wife! Oh, no! Impossible! That could never be! And then, as usual,
even in the midst of her strange sense of discomfort and perplexity,
there came a flash of humor which made her laugh noiselessly in the dim
light. "Tom would call me Mrs. Sly Bacon!"

But a second reading of the letter made her look grave. She was very
much puzzled to know how to answer it; how, in refusing, to give him
least pain. There was nothing else to hesitate about, of her own mind
she was quite sure. There was only an hour till post time. She must
write at once, and she must write in a way which could not be mistaken.
There was not a grain of coquetry about Erica. After some thought she
wrote the following lines:

"Dear Mr. Cunningham, Your letter surprised me very much and pained me,
too, because in replying I fear I must giv