“I got to like the Ottinge folk, and to know them and their rustic ways, and, living as a working man, it was a splendid chance for me to learn many things I was as ignorant of, as that stone. I used to sit in the tap and listen to the talk, and got to see things from a different perspective. And I’d some good times, too, at choir practice, and penny readings, and the night of the servants’ ball at Westmere, when I had one delicious waltz with you--do you remember?” “I do, indeed, and how Bertie Woolcock snatched me away, and said ladies should never dance with men-servants, and I replied, that his mother had opened the ball with the butler!” “You had him there; and then came my London situation, and the time with Masham, and now it’s all over. I met Uncle Dick yesterday by chance, and he has been a brick. We had a rare good old talk last night, and I told him the history of the last eighteen months. I’m to manage the property, go into the Yeomanry, live at Wynyard--it’s a big rambling old house--and he thinks I ought to marry; what do _you_ say?” Aurea was silent. “My sister declares that in all her life she never heard of anything so outrageously audacious and impertinent, as my imploring you to accept me blindfold; and, as it is--you know so little of me. Why, we never sat at table together till to-night. I’ve always been below the salt!” As he ceased speaking and awaited her reply, Aurea plucked up her courage and said: “But I do know you--I know you are kind and patient, and good-tempered, and to be trusted.” “And you do care for me?” “Yes--I--always did--though I fought against it; and most of the time I knew your name was Wynyard, and that you’d been in the Service.” “But how on earth did you find it out?” “By chance, from a Hussar in Brodfield; as he passed I heard him say to his companion, ‘That’s Lieutenant Wynyard,’ but I kept the information to myself.” “And now there are no longer any secrets between us--you and I belong to one another, don’t we?” As Aurea, with a slight but significant gesture, assented, he drew her close to him, she yielded, and he stooped and kissed her. Someone in the villa above was playing Tschaikowsky’s “Chant sans paroles,” and its tender and exquisite harmonies seemed an appropriate accompaniment to the scene upon the shore. It was ten o’clock, and Mrs. Morven, who was knitting and counting, frowning and thinking, suddenly overheard a long-legged lassie, with a tawny mane, say to her mother, in a tone of repressed excitement-- “Mother--only think! You know the pretty girl--the one we all admire--I saw her on the beach just now, a good bit away, and she was crying I’m sure--and the young gentleman who came at dinner time _kissed her_!” * * * * *