Mr. Sylvanus Smith essayed a discreet innocence by a warning cough to Aura, and a hasty return to his papers; but the girl was too much in earnest for silence. Her nerves, overstrung by the strain of the long day, during which almost everything to be learnt in life seemed to have been crowded into a few hours, vibrated to this new possibility. She rose instantly, and advancing a step or two stood facing the young man with a new recklessness in her expression. "Ted," she said, and there was a note of appeal in her voice, "Grandfather has been telling me something I can't believe. Is it true that you also want to marry me?" For an instant surprised out of balance, overwhelmed by the utter unconventionality of the question the young man hesitated. Yes or no seemed to him equally out of keeping. Then his passion for her came to the rescue, and something told him that the question would never have been asked if the girl had not staked herself, body and soul, on the answer. He strode across the room and took her by her outstretched hands. "I have wanted it, Aura," he said, and his voice vibrated as the whole world seemed to him to be vibrating, "ever since I saw you first--do you remember--" he was drawing her closer to him unresisting, though in her eyes there was a certain expectant dread, "you were standing--surely you remember--" his voice grew softer--"in the garden room--standing in the sunlight with the flowers behind you--and the cockatoo----" the sentence ended in the first kiss which had ever fallen on Aura's lips. She did not shrink. On the contrary, she gave a little sigh of satisfaction, and looked gratefully at Ted. "Yes, I remember," she said softly, "and ever since then you have been so good to me." "Then you will marry me, Aura," he said--"you will really marry me?" "If it makes you happy--if you really mean it, and--" she turned to her grandfather--"does it make you happy too?" He was busy with his pocket handkerchief, and blew his nose ere he replied. "My happiness is assured if--if you--" He said no more, for his memory was clear, and there are some things which do not grow dim with years, and one of them is the remembrance of love. "I am quite happy," she said gravely, "and I think I shall always be happy with Ted." Whereupon Ted kissed her again, and tried to realise that he was in the seventh heaven of delight; as he was indeed, though he felt rather rushed as he thought of the night mail to Paris. "We have hardly time to get engaged decently and in order," he said joyfully. "You will have to wait for your ring, my darling." "My ring?" she echoed inquiringly, whereupon Ted laughed still more joyfully at her entrancing ignorance of the world and its ways; but Sylvanus Smith, who had been looking into the fire, roused himself to touch a ring which he always wore on his little finger. "I have one here," he said dreamily; "it holds her mother's hair."