o leave Fair Acres without getting a definite answer from Joyce
herself.

Honourable and straightforward, he determined not to return to Fair
Acres unless prepared to ask her father's permission to lay all he had
at her feet. He was conscious that at present that _all_ did not imply
much, and besides, he had his mother to think of, and he must not marry
till he was really in a position to support a wife in that station of
life to which he had been called. He could wait for seven years, like
Jacob of old--waiting for Joyce was worth any sacrifice. But what if,
when she emerged from her retirement and went to Barley Wood, some one
else might set his heart on the prize and win it. Then he recalled her
words, spoken in answer to his question as he carried her towards home
the evening before:

"No; I will not forget you."

They seemed to possess a double meaning as he repeated them again and
again, as he retraced his steps over the observatory towards Sion Hill.
They were heard in the late voices of the thrushes in the woods across
the river--those dark, mysterious Leigh woods which, in the dim and
fading light, clothed the opposite heights with dim and motionless
masses; they were heard in the call of the sailor boys from the full
river below St. Vincent's Rock, on whose summit he stood; they seemed to
wrap him round with a certainty that the giant rock, from which he
looked over the fading landscape lying to his left, encircled by a line
of hills, on which the fine tower of Dundry stood like a black sentinel
against the clear sky, was not more steadfast than would Joyce's heart
be, were it once given to him.

There were then no railings to protect passers-by from approaching too
near the edge of the precipice which falls sheer down from this point a
distance of three hundred feet, and Gilbert was startled from his dream
by a voice near:

"You are perilously near the edge, unless you wish to go over!"

He turned with a sudden gesture, and, to his surprise, saw Gratian.

"I saw you wander over here from my window," she said. "Look! there are
our houses, and I came to look after you."

"That was very obliging," Gilbert said, a little satirically.

"Now, don't be so high and mighty. I wish to be your friend, as I have
always been, Gilbert. I was very sorry for you when you were so
shamefully teazed by your young uncle; he does not like to be called
_old_. I hope you noticed that."

"Oh! it is over now. I had no rig