ship which had gone beyond all ceremony made his heart
overflow. By an unusual chance, Geoff was not there, staring with his
little sharp eyes, and this made everything sweeter. He had her to
himself at last.

"Do I disturb you? Are you busy?" he said.

"Not at all. At least, if I am busy, it is nothing that requires
immediate attention. I am a little stupid about those drainages, and
what is the landlord's part. I wonder if you know any better? You must
have the same sort of things to do?"

"I am ashamed to say I don't, now; but I'll get it all up," he said
eagerly,--"that must be perfectly easy,--and give you the result."

"You will cram me, in short," said Lady Markland, with a smile. "You
ought to be somebody's private secretary. How well you would do it! That
was all right about the lease. Mr. Longstaffe was very much astonished
that I should know so much. I did not tell him it was you."

"It was not me!" cried Warrender. "I had only the facts, and you supplied
the understanding. I suppose that is to be my trade too; it will be
something to think that you have trained me for it."

"That we have studied together," she said, "with most of the ignorance
on my side, and most of the knowledge on yours. Oh, I am not too humble.
I allow that I sometimes see my way out of a difficulty, with a jump,
before you have reasoned it out. That sort of thing is conceded to a
woman. I am 'not without intelligence,' Mr. Longstaffe himself says. But
what do you mean to imply by that tone of regret--you suppose it is to
be your trade?"

"I don't mean anything,--to make you ask, perhaps. I have no doubt I
mean that finding out what was the exact pound of flesh the farmers
could demand, and how much on our side we could exact, did not seem very
lofty work: until I remembered that you were doing it too."

"My doing it makes no difference," said Lady Markland. "You ought to know
better than to make me those little compliments. But for all that, it is
a fine trade. Looking after the land is the best of trades. Everything
must have begun with it, and it will go on for ever. And the pleasure of
thinking one can improve, and hand it over richer and better for the
expenditure of a little brains upon it, as well as other condiments--"
she said, with a laugh. "Guano, you will say, is of more use perhaps
than the brains."

She carried off a little enthusiasm, which had lit up her eyes, with
this laugh at the end.

"I don't think so," s