ding. "I'll watch with you," said May Bartram.

CHAPTER II

The fact that she "knew"--knew and yet neither chaffed him nor betrayed
him--had in a short time begun to constitute between them a goodly bond,
which became more marked when, within the year that followed their
afternoon at Weatherend, the opportunities for meeting multiplied. The
event that thus promoted these occasions was the death of the ancient
lady her great-aunt, under whose wing, since losing her mother, she had
to such an extent found shelter, and who, though but the widowed mother
of the new successor to the property, had succeeded--thanks to a high
tone and a high temper--in not forfeiting the supreme position at the
great house. The deposition of this personage arrived but with her
death, which, followed by many changes, made in particular a difference
for the young woman in whom Marcher's expert attention had recognised
from the first a dependent with a pride that might ache though it didn't
bristle. Nothing for a long time had made him easier than the thought
that the aching must have been much soothed by Miss Bartram's now finding
herself able to set up a small home in London. She had acquired
property, to an amount that made that luxury just possible, under her
aunt's extremely complicated will, and when the whole matter began to be
straightened out, which indeed took time, she let him know that the happy
issue was at last in view. He had seen her again before that day, both
because she had more than once accompanied the ancient lady to town and
because he had paid another visit to the friends who so conveniently made
of Weatherend one of the charms of their own hospitality. These friends
had taken him back there; he had achieved there again with Miss Bartram
some quiet detachment; and he had in London succeeded in persuading her
to more than one brief absence from her aunt. They went together, on
these latter occasions, to the National Gallery and the South Kensington
Museum, where, among vivid reminders, they talked of Italy at large--not
now attempting to recover, as at first, the taste of their youth and
their ignorance. That recovery, the first day at Weatherend, had served
its purpose well, had given them quite enough; so that they were, to
Marcher's sense, no longer hovering about the head-waters of their
stream, but had felt their boat pushed sharply off and down the current.

They were literally afloat together; for o