way from us," Mrs Boyce said, speaking
by no means loud, but slowly and plainly, hoping thereby to flatter
the old woman. But the old woman understood it all. "She's a sly
creature, is Mrs Boyce," Mrs Hearn said to Mrs Dale, before the
evening was out. There are some old people whom it is very hard to
flatter, and with whom it is, nevertheless, almost impossible to live
unless you do flatter them.

At last the two heroes came in across the lawn at the drawing-room
window; and Lily, as they entered, dropped a low curtsey before them,
gently swelling down upon the ground with her light muslin dress,
till she looked like some wondrous flower that had bloomed upon the
carpet, and putting her two hands, with the backs of her fingers
pressed together, on the buckle of her girdle, she said, "We are
waiting upon your honours' kind grace, and feel how much we owe to
you for favouring our poor abode." And then she gently rose up again,
smiling, oh, so sweetly, on the man she loved, and the puffings and
swellings went out of her muslin.

I think there is nothing in the world so pretty as the conscious
little tricks of love played off by a girl towards the man she loves,
when she has made up her mind boldly that all the world may know that
she has given herself away to him.

I am not sure that Crosbie liked it all as much as he should have
done. The bold assurance of her love when they two were alone
together he did like. What man does not like such assurances on such
occasions? But perhaps he would have been better pleased had Lily
shown more reticence,--been more secret, as it were, as to her
feelings, when others were around them. It was not that he accused
her in his thoughts of any want of delicacy. He read her character
too well; was, if not quite aright in his reading of it, at least too
nearly so to admit of his making against her any such accusation as
that. It was the calf-like feeling that was disagreeable to him. He
did not like to be presented, even to the world of Allington, as a
victim caught for the sacrifice, and bound with ribbon for the altar.
And then there lurked behind it all a feeling that it might be safer
that the thing should not be so openly manifested before all the
world. Of course, everybody knew that he was engaged to Lily Dale;
nor had he, as he said to himself, perhaps too frequently, the
slightest idea of breaking from that engagement. But then the
marriage might possibly be delayed. He had not