"But now?" Even as he watches her, putting this echoed interrogation, he sees the radiance breaking through the cloud his question had gathered, as a very strong sun breaks through a very translucent exhalation. "But now?" she repeats vaguely, and smiling to herself, forgetful of his very presence beside her--"But now? Did I say 'But now?' Ah, here they are back again!" CHAPTER XXIII. "I am going to turn the tables on you," says Amelia next morning to her lover, after the usual endearments, which of late he has been conscientiously anxious not to scant or slur, have passed between them, very fairly executed by him, and adoringly accepted and returned by her; "you are always arranging treats for me; now I have planned one for you!" She looks so beaming with benevolent joy as she makes this statement, that Jim stoops and drops an extra kiss--not in the bond--upon her lifted face. "Indeed, dear!" he answers kindly, "I do not quite know what I have done to deserve it; but I hope it is a nice one." "It is very nice--delightful." "Delightful, eh?" echoes he, raising his brows, while a transient wonder crosses his mind as to what project she or anyone else could suggest to him that, at this juncture of his affairs, could merit that epithet; "well, am I to guess what it is? or are you going to tell me?" Amelia's face still wears that smile of complacent confidence in having something pleasant to communicate which has puzzled her companion. "We have never been at Vallombrosa, have we?" asks she. "Never." "Well, we are going there to-morrow." "Are we? is that your treat?" inquires he, wondering what of peculiarly and distinctively festal for him this expedition may be supposed to have above all their former ones. "And we are not going alone." "There is nothing very exceptional in that; Cecilia is mostly good enough to lend us her company." "I am not thinking of Cecilia; I have persuaded"--the benevolent smile broadening across her cheeks--"I have persuaded some friends of yours to join us." It does not for an instant cross his mind either to doubt or to affect uncertainty as to who the friends of whom she speaks may be; but the suggestion is so profoundly unwelcome to him, that not even the certainty of mortifying the unselfish creature before him can hinder him from showing it. Her countenance falls. "You are not glad?" she asks crestfallenly, "you are not pleased?" It is impossible for him to say that he is, and all that is left to him is to put his vexation into words that may be as little as possible fraught with disappointment to his poor hearer's ear. "I--I--had rather have had you to myself."