eet him. Envy him not;
thou hast had thy walk; but lend him rather that thirty shillings
that he asks of thee. So shall Maria's heart be glad as she accepts
his golden brooch.

But for our friend Sir Henry every joy was present. Youth and
wealth and love were all his, and his all together. He was but
eight-and-twenty, was a member of Parliament, solicitor-general,
owner of a house in Eaton Square, and possessor of as much
well-trained beauty as was to be found at that time within the magic
circle of any circumambient crinoline within the bills of mortality.
Was it not sweet for him to wander through the rye? Had he not
fallen upon an Elysium, a very paradise of earthly joys? Was not his
spring-tide at the full flood?

And so they started on their walk. It was the first that they had
ever taken together. What Sir Henry may have done before in that
line this history says not. A man who is solicitor-general at
eight-and-twenty can hardly have had time for much. But the practice
which he perhaps wanted, Caroline had had. There had been walks
as well as rides at Littlebath; and walks also, though perhaps of
doubtful joy, amidst those graves below the walls of Jerusalem.

And so they started. There is--or perhaps we should say was; for
time and railways, and straggling new suburban villas, may now have
destroyed it all; but there is, or was, a pretty woodland lane,
running from the back of Hadley church, through the last remnants of
what once was Enfield Chase. How many lovers' feet have crushed the
leaves that used to lie in autumn along that pretty lane! Well, well;
there shall not be another word in that strain. I speak solely now
of the time here present to Sir Henry; all former days and former
roamings there shall be clean forgotten. The solicitor-general now
thither wends his way, and love and beauty attend upon his feet. See
how he opens the gate that stands by the churchyard paling? Does it
stand there yet, I wonder? Well, well; we will say it does.

"It is a beautiful day for a walk," said Sir Henry.

"Yes, very beautiful," said Caroline.

"There is nothing I am so fond of as a long walk," said the
gentleman.

"It is very nice," said the lady. "But I do not know that I care for
going very far to-day. I am not quite strong at present."

"Not strong?" And the solicitor-general put on a look of deep alarm.

"Oh, there is nothing the matter with me; but I am not quite strong
for walking. I am out of practice;