om which it peeped--or
perhaps the cleanliness of the step she was scouring, since he seemed to
instant, just one instant, Sir George wavered, his face hot; for the
third part of a second the dread of the ridiculous, the temptation to
turn and go as he had come were on him. Nor need he, for this, forfeit
our sympathies, or cease to be a hero. It was the age, be it remembered,
of the artificial. Nature, swathed in perukes and ruffles, powder and
patches, and stifled under a hundred studied airs and grimaces, had much
ado to breathe. Yet it did breathe; and Sir George, after that brief
hesitation, did go on. Three steps carried him down the passage.
Another, and the broken urn and tiny treillage brought him up short, but
on the greensward, in the sunlight, with the air of heaven fanning his
brow. The garden was a very duodecimo; a single glance showed him its
whole extent--and Julia.

She was not at the wash-tub, as the old lady had said; but on her knees,
scouring a step that led to a side-door, her drugget gown pinned up
about her. She raised her head as he appeared, and met his gaze
defiantly, her face flushing red with shame or some kindred feeling. He
was struck by a strange likeness between her hard look and the frown
with which the old woman at the door had received him; and this, or
something in the misfit of her gown, or the glimpse he had of a stocking
grotesquely fine in comparison of the stuff from which it peeped--or
perhaps the cleanliness of the step she was scouring, since he seemed to
see everything without looking at it--put an idea into his head. He
checked the exclamation that sprang to his lips; and as she rose to her
feet he saluted her with an easy smile. 'I have found you, child,' he
said. 'Did you think you had hidden yourself?'

She met his gaze sullenly. 'You have found me to no purpose,' she said.
Her tone matched her look.

The look and the words together awoke an odd pang in his heart. He had
seen her arch, pitiful, wrathful, contemptuous, even kind; but never
sullen. The new mood gave him the measure of her heart; but his tone
lost nothing of its airiness. 'I hope not,' he said, 'for we think you
have behaved vastly well in the matter, child. Remarkably well! And
that, let me tell you, is not only my own sentiment, but the opinion of
my friends who perfectly approve of the arrangement I have come to
propose. You may accept it, therefore, without the least scruple.'

'Arrangement?' she mu