lity of the other. And the more Farrell explored her the more
charmed he was. She was curiously ignorant, whether of books or life.
Even the busy commercial life amid which she had been brought up, as it
seemed to him, she had observed but little. When he asked her questions
about Manchester, she was generally vague or puzzled. He saw that she
was naturally romantic; and her passion for the absent Sarratt, together
with her gnawing anxiety about him which could not be concealed, made
her, again, very touching in the eyes of a man of imagination whose
feelings were quick and soft. He walked about with her for more than an
hour, discoursing ironically on the Grecian temples, the rustic bridges
and pools and fountains, now in imitation of the older Versailles and
now of the Trianon, with which his grandfather had burdened his
descendants; so that the glorious evening, as it descended, presently
became a merry duel between him and her, she defending and admiring his
own possessions, and he attacking them. Her eyes sparkled, and a bright
red--a natural red--came back into her pale cheeks. She spoke and moved
with an evident exhilaration, as though she realised her own developing
powers, and was astonished by her own readiness of speech, and the sheer
pleasure of talk. And something, no doubt, entered in of the new scene;
its scale and magnificence, so different from anything she had yet
known; its suggestion of a tradition reaching back through many
generations, and of a series of lives relieved from all vulgar
necessities, playing as they pleased with art and money, with water and
wood.

At the same time she was never merely dazzled; and never, for one
moment, covetous or envious. He was struck with her simple dignity and
independence; and he perfectly understood that a being so profoundly in
love, and so overshadowed by a great fear, could only lend, so to speak,
her outer mind to Carton or the persons in it. He gathered roses for
her, and did his utmost to please her. But she seemed to him all the
time like a little hovering elf--smiling and gay--but quite intangible.

* * * * *

Dinner in the 'cottage' was short, but in Bridget's eyes perfect.
Personally, she was not enjoying herself very much, for she had made up
her mind that she did not get on with military men, and that it was
their fault, not hers; so that she sat often silent, a fact however
unnoticed in the general clatter of the t