"When she saw me standing still before her she dropped her eyes and made for a gate leading into the wood. The fastening was troublesome, so I went and opened it for her. She turned as she passed through, and bent her head--with a queenliness, heavens!--and smiled and whispered a word of thanks. I saw her eyes then for an instant; they--but I ought not to speak of them, and, after all, I don't know what color they were. She walked a short distance whilst I was shutting the gate again, and I was not the man to spoil her solitude, so I went off very fast; but looking back just once--only once, Tregurtha--I saw her standing amongst those blue-bells, gathering them, whilst the sunbeams slanted through the pale green larch boughs on to that glinting, golden head. After all, what immense possibilities this world contains! I believe this--this vision to have been the daughter of a mortal man who was once a _boy_, probably also a schoolboy! But then there was a woman in the case." "Thank you, old fellow," said Richard, consulting his watch: "this has been very instructive; just as good as 'Half-hours with the best Poets;' but I suppose we must all descend to commonplace. You must tone yourself down and come to supper." "Supper!" gasped Roscoria, blankly. "Supper," retorted Tregurtha, firmly. "You shall note that not all your boys are overcome by an _affaire de coeur_, and that if you keep them waiting much longer there will be a bread riot. Here is comfort for you. The Tremenheeres give a tennis party; hie you to it, and if this Oread of yours be mortal, she will surely there be found. It is a good way to distinguish women from angels: the former, if young, can scarcely resist a party." IV. THE WAY TO TAKE A PARTY. In the interval between the evening mentioned and the day of the tennis-party, Roscoria was out early and late, whenever his calling permitted, roaming restlessly in the woods, haunting the sunny fields like a dark shadow, seeking for his goddess in the spot where he had seen her, and in every other romantic and flowery nook that he thought likely. Of course he never saw her. If he had been his own cook, the venerable Mrs. Tartlett, if he had been his youngest pupil, small Tom Rodda; if he had been the parish blacksmith, or cowboy, or even the parson--a _paterfamilias_--he would assuredly have seen her. But as he was her lover, and was searching for her high and low, he never caught so much as the glimmer of her fair white robe dim in the distance.