occupy her--except
your humble servant--consequently she suggested a stroll in the garden
before bedtime.

She was almost beautiful in the moonlight, quite ethereal-looking, and
her hair a nimbus for that small white face of hers; just as small, just
as white, and just as smooth as when those big eyes used to look up into
our eyes under an Indian moon. And she is always agreeable, always
witty, or at least "smart." Still, I must confess that I was ungallantly
absent-minded until something she said waked me up from a brown study.

"He really _is_ a nice boy," she was saying, "and after all, it's a
tribute to your distinguished qualities that he should be afraid to
speak to you."

I guessed at once that she must have been talking of her nephew.

"What is he afraid to say to me?" I enquired.

"Afraid to ask you for Miss Lethbridge," she explained.

I think just about that time an ugly black eyelid shut down over the
moon. Anyhow, the world darkened for me.

"Isn't it rather old-fashioned, in these rapid days, for a young man to
ask a guardian's permission to make love to his ward?" said I, savage as
a chained dog.

She laughed. "Oh, he hasn't waited for that to make love, I'm afraid,"
she returned. "But he's afraid she won't accept him without your
consent."

"He seems to be afraid of several things," I growled. "Afraid to speak
to me--afraid to speak to her."

"He is young, and love has made him modest," Mrs. Senter excused her
favourite. "He knows he isn't a _grand parti_. But if they care for each
other?"

"I have seen no reason to believe that she cares for him," said I,
thinking myself (more or less) safe in the recollection of Ellaline's
words at Winchester. I told you about them, I think.

"Ah, well," said Mrs. Senter, "she cares enough, anyhow, to have entered
into a pact of some sort with the poor boy--a kind of understanding
that, if _you_ approve, she may at least _think_ of being engaged to him
in the future."

"You are sure she has done that?" I asked, staggered by this statement,
which I was far from expecting.

"Quite sure, unless love (in the form of Dick) is deaf as well as blind.
He certainly flatters himself that they are on these terms."

"Since when?" I persisted. (By the by, I wonder if the inquisitors ever
hit on the ingenious plan of making prisoners torture themselves?
Nothing hurts worse than self-torture.)

"Only since Lulworth Cove, or you would have heard of it before. You