There was daylight lingering still in the low fields of Cambridgeshire sky. There was a young May moon, too, whose yellowish silver caused the outlines of Dinah Thurston’s head and throat to stand out in waxen relief against the dusky arbutus hedge that divided the cottage garden and the road. Gaston Arbuthnot turned sharply round for an instant and saw her. Shouting a cheery ‘Hullo!’ to his cousin, he drove on, giving a little valedictory wave of his whip ere he disappeared. And Geff, the glory shorn suddenly, unaccountably from his Eden, bade Dinah good-night, and started on his four-mile trudge back to Cambridge. It was ten days before he again smelt the mignonette and roses of the cottage, or slaked his soul’s thirst by gazing on Dinah’s face. By early post next morning came a letter saying that the uncle to whose reluctantly generous hand he owed the hard All of his life lay at the point of death. The old man was sound of mind still, and desired his nephew’s presence. A lawyer wrote the letter, and it was added that Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot would well consult his worldly interests by obeying the wishes of the dying man without delay. It was one of those crises when all our present and future good seems to resolve itself into a desolate ‘perhaps.’ Geoffrey’s debts were few. Still, he had debts. The possibility of remaining up his nine terms at Cambridge might depend upon the will of this stern-hearted uncle who, dying, craved his presence. And yet, in obeying the summons, might he not be risking dearer things than worldly success--jeopardising hopes which already threw a trembling light over his loveless life? He had spoken no syllable of his passion to Dinah, was too self-distrustful to tell his secret by means so matter-of-fact as a sheet of paper and the post. And so, like many another timid suitor, Geoffrey Arbuthnot elected to play a losing game. With immense fidelity in his breast, but without a word of explanation, he set off by noon of that day to London--not ignorant that Gaston’s eyes and those of Dinah Thurston had already met. A girl’s vanity, if not her heart, might well have been wounded by such conduct. In after times Geoffrey Arbuthnot, musing over his lost happiness, would apply such medicine to his sore spirit as the limited pharmacopœia of disappointment can offer. If he had had a man’s metal, if, instead of flying like a schoolboy, he had said to her, on that evening when Gaston drove past them at the gate, ‘Take me or reject me, but choose!’--had he thus spoken, Geoffrey used to think, he might have won her.