h to the young lady, but it proved somewhat
embarrassing to the writer of these lines. That morning's post had
brought a letter from my partner, which obliged me to return to town
the next day by the afternoon train. It was extremely probable that I
should find no second opportunity of presenting myself at Limmeridge
House during the remainder of the year. In that case, supposing Miss
Fairlie ultimately decided on holding to her engagement, my necessary
personal communication with her, before I drew her settlement, would
become something like a downright impossibility, and we should be
obliged to commit to writing questions which ought always to be
discussed on both sides by word of mouth. I said nothing about this
difficulty until Sir Percival had been consulted on the subject of the
desired delay. He was too gallant a gentleman not to grant the request
immediately. When Miss Halcombe informed me of this I told her that I
must absolutely speak to her sister before I left Limmeridge, and it
was, therefore, arranged that I should see Miss Fairlie in her own
sitting-room the next morning. She did not come down to dinner, or
join us in the evening. Indisposition was the excuse, and I thought
Sir Percival looked, as well he might, a little annoyed when he heard
of it.

The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, I went up to Miss
Fairlie's sitting-room. The poor girl looked so pale and sad, and came
forward to welcome me so readily and prettily, that the resolution to
lecture her on her caprice and indecision, which I had been forming all
the way upstairs, failed me on the spot. I led her back to the chair
from which she had risen, and placed myself opposite to her. Her
cross-grained pet greyhound was in the room, and I fully expected a
barking and snapping reception. Strange to say, the whimsical little
brute falsified my expectations by jumping into my lap and poking its
sharp muzzle familiarly into my hand the moment I sat down.

"You used often to sit on my knee when you were a child, my dear," I
said, "and now your little dog seems determined to succeed you in the
vacant throne. Is that pretty drawing your doing?"

I pointed to a little album which lay on the table by her side and
which she had evidently been looking over when I came in. The page
that lay open had a small water-colour landscape very neatly mounted on
it. This was the drawing which had suggested my question--an idle
question enough