your tobacco, I believe. Do you remember how we walked to
Niddon, and you hadn't a word for anybody?"

"I remember I wanted you to go down to the river with me, and you
wouldn't go."

"You asked me only once, and I did so long to go with you. Do you
remember the rocks in the river? I remember the place as though I saw
it now; and how I longed to jump from one stone to another. Hugh, if
we are ever married, you must take me there, and let me jump on those
stones."

"You pretended that you could not think of wetting your feet."

"Of course I pretended,--because you were so cross, and so cold. Oh,
dear! I wonder whether you will ever know it all."

"Don't I know it all now?"

"I suppose you do, nearly. There is mighty little of a secret in it,
and it is the same thing that is going on always. Only it seems so
strange to me that I should ever have loved any one so dearly,--and
that for next to no reason at all. You never made yourself very
charming that I know of;--did you?"

"I did my best. It wasn't much, I dare say."

"You did nothing, sir,--except just let me fall in love with you. And
you were not quite sure that you would let me do that."

"Nora, I don't think you do understand."

"I do;--perfectly. Why were you cross with me, instead of saying one
nice word when you were down at Nuncombe? I do understand."

"Why was it?"

"Because you did not think well enough of me to believe that I would
give myself to a man who had no fortune of his own. I know it now,
and I knew it then; and therefore I wouldn't dabble in the river with
you. But it's all over now, and we'll go and get wet together like
dear little children, and Priscilla shall scold us when we come
back."

They were alone in the sitting-room for more than an hour, and Lady
Rowley was patient up-stairs as mothers will be patient in such
emergencies. Sophie and Lucy had gone out and left her; and there
she remained telling herself, as the weary minutes went by, that as
the thing was to be, it was well that the young people should be
together. Hugh Stanbury could never be to her what Mr. Glascock would
have been,--a son-in-law to sit and think about, and dream of, and
be proud of,--whose existence as her son-in-law would in itself have
been a happiness to her out in her banishment at the other side of
the world; but nevertheless it was natural to her, as a soft-hearted
loving mother with many daughters, that any son-in-law should be dear
to her. N