and again and
again they clasped each other, murmuring inarticulately.

"Well," sighed Arthur, sinking back on the ground, "that's the most
wonderful thing that's ever happened to me." He looked as if he were
trying to put things seen in a dream beside real things.

There was a long silence.

"It's the most perfect thing in the world," Susan stated, very gently
and with great conviction. It was no longer merely a proposal of
marriage, but of marriage with Arthur, with whom she was in love.

In the silence that followed, holding his hand tightly in hers, she
prayed to God that she might make him a good wife.

"And what will Mr. Perrott say?" she asked at the end of it.

"Dear old fellow," said Arthur who, now that the first shock was over,
was relaxing into an enormous sense of pleasure and contentment. "We
must be very nice to him, Susan."

He told her how hard Perrott's life had been, and how absurdly devoted
he was to Arthur himself. He went on to tell her about his mother, a
widow lady, of strong character. In return Susan sketched the portraits
of her own family--Edith in particular, her youngest sister, whom she
loved better than any one else, "except you, Arthur. . . . Arthur," she
continued, "what was it that you first liked me for?"

"It was a buckle you wore one night at sea," said Arthur, after
due consideration. "I remember noticing--it's an absurd thing to
notice!--that you didn't take peas, because I don't either."

From this they went on to compare their more serious tastes, or rather
Susan ascertained what Arthur cared about, and professed herself very
fond of the same thing. They would live in London, perhaps have a
cottage in the country near Susan's family, for they would find it
strange without her at first. Her mind, stunned to begin with, now flew
to the various changes that her engagement would make--how delightful it
would be to join the ranks of the married women--no longer to hang on to
groups of girls much younger than herself--to escape the long solitude
of an old maid's life. Now and then her amazing good fortune overcame
her, and she turned to Arthur with an exclamation of love.

They lay in each other's arms and had no notion that they were observed.
Yet two figures suddenly appeared among the trees above them. "Here's
shade," began Hewet, when Rachel suddenly stopped dead. They saw a man
and woman lying on the ground beneath them, rolling slightly this
way and that as the embra