conspirator,
refused to join in the laughter when the flight was made and safety
secured. They were like a couple of children with a mystification in
hand, notwithstanding that they were planning an invasion so serious of
all the proprieties, and meant to make so disreputable and revolting a
bargain. But this was not in their ideas. Bice went out very early in
the morning before any one was astir, to take needful exercise in the
park, and gather early primroses and the catkins that hung upon the
trees. On one of these occasions she met Mr. Derwentwater, of whom she
was not afraid; and at another time, when skirting the shrubberies at a
somewhat later hour to keep clear of any stragglers, Jock. Mr.
Derwentwater talked to her in a tone which amused the girl. He spoke of
Proserpina gathering flowers, herself a----and then altered and grew
confused under her eye.

"Herself a---- What?" said Bice. "Have you forgotten what you were going
to say?"

"I have not forgotten--herself a fairer flower. One does not forget such
lovely words as these," he said, injured by the question. "But when one
comes face to face with the impersonation of the poet's idea----"

"It was poetry, then?" said Bice. "I know very little of that. It is not
in Tauchnitz, perhaps? All I know of English is from the Tauchnitz. I
read, chiefly, novels. You do not approve of that? But, yes, I like
them; because it is life."

"Is it life?" said Derwentwater, who was somewhat contemptuous of
fiction.

"At least it is England," said Bice. "The girls who will not make a good
marriage because of some one else, or because it is their parents who
arrange it. That is how Lady Randolph speaks. She says that nothing is
right but to fall--how do you call it?--in love?--It is not _comme il
faut_ even to talk of that."

Derwentwater blushed like a girl. He was more inexperienced in many ways
than Bice. "And do you regard it in another point of view?" he said.

Bice laughed out with frank disdain. "Certainly, I regard it
different--oh, quite different. That is not what happens in life."

"And do you consider life is chiefly occupied with getting married?" he
continued, feeling, along with a good deal of quite unnecessary
excitement, a great desire to know what was her way of looking at this
great subject. Visions had been flashing recently through his mind,
which pointed a little this way too.

"Altogether," said Bice, with great gravity, "how can you begin to liv