Chapter ix.

VAUGHAN was certainly less "tired" in the morning, as it was only natural and to be expected that he should be. He was vivacious, conversational, gay. If his vivacity was somewhat restless, and his talk more like a refuge from uncomfortable silence than a spontaneous flow of words, Caroline did not detect it.

66

Carry, we must go for a walk this morning. I long for a ramble through the pine wood again." "This morning? Oh, I am so sorry! Did not you hear my uncle beg me to be with him this morning? Indeed, I always sit with him till our early dinner hour."

"And so the best part of the day goes. And it is such a pleasant day, too."

He was veritably beginning to view things en couleur de rose. It was a heavy, sombre-clouded

November morning as ever dawned in sluggish

mists.

"In the afternoon

fully.

"began Caroline, wist

"You forget, my dear, that in November there is no such season as 'afternoon.' No; a walk on the terrace is the utmost you'll get after two o'clock."

"You must have your ramble alone then. It's a pity; I should have liked it so much."

"I'll tell you what I shall do. I thought we would go together; but it will be quite as well for me to get it over by myself. I'll go and call on Miss Kendal."

"Ah, do!" she cried, eagerly, delighted at his voluntary proposal. "Take her my love, and say I shall come to see her, and make acquaintance with Madame de Vigny, to-morrow, if I can. Perhaps, though, they would come here this evening."

"Oh, don't ask them," said Vaughan, hastily; "let us at least have our evenings to ourselves." "Unsociable!" smilingly she answered. "If only you would give me a proper description of

the stranger lady, perhaps my impatience might be

controlled. But you are as vague and unsatisfactory as-as an oracle."

He glanced at her. She was laughing, in utter simplicity; and he laughed too.

“Well, then, I'll go, and entertain you at dinner-time with an account of adventures-shall

my

I?"

"That will be charming! I must go to my uncle now. And you will be off to Beacon's Cottage soon I suppose? Good-by!" She was going.

"Stop!" Vaughan cried. She lingered. "I say," he began, with a curious hesitation, "shall I— shall I have to endure the ordeal of-of congratulations and so forth up there? Do they know

She coloured, perhaps because he was looking at her so earnestly.

"I told Miss Kendal," she said, uttering the words quickly, as if not without effort. Vaughan looked away, strode to the window, with his hands in his pockets. However, the next minute he laughed lightly.

"What a fool a man is sometimes! Why should I care? What would it matter to me if all the children in the parish ran after me, calling out, 'He's going to be married? Eh, Carry?"

"I should say it would be unpleasant, at least. I don't think you need fear any such éclat. My uncle did not wish it-our engagement," bravely spoken out," to be talked over by the neighbourhood; and Miss Kendal, knowing his wish, is the last person to mention the fact again."

"Like himself, like yourself too, Carry!" cried Vaughan, with a wonderful flashing of satisfaction on his face. He caught her hand, and kissed it, opened the door for her to pass out, and waved his hand to her, as she went up the stairs.

He went back into the dining-room; he stood, with folded arms, looking, not seeing, out at the window, with his brow knit, his mouth compressed

in

very evident complication of thought. Only for a minute or two, however. Then he was off, walking rapidly along the broad hill-side path, under the forlorn boughs of the almost wintry beeches, with the low, sullen wind wailing round, and the

stern clouds in huge masses looming weightily overhead-on to Beacon's Cottage.

The wind, which was deep-mouthed and heavy as with a subdued malignity, in the valley, was fiercely astir upon the hill. It swung the pinetrees, it shook the crackling oak branches. It came about Vaughan like an enemy who would fain repel him from the gate of that breezy paradise.

But once in-doors, the scene was changed. The maid of whom he inquired for Miss Kendal announced that that lady was then engaged with her pupils. But on his saying he would wait till she was at liberty, he was shown into the drawing-room

a long apartment, with two French windows looking out through the wreathed columns of the verandah, across the broad lawn to the thick shrubberies, and thence over the "dip" of the valley to the wave-like hills beyond. But Vaughan thought the interior of the room more inviting for the gaze to rest upon. Imprimis, walls of a pale vague colour, with a slender, graceful twining pattern of leaf-green described thereon. The usual amount