"But even if it were so," continues Byng, his sun breaking out again in full brilliancy from the very little cloud that, during his last sentence or two, had dimmed its lustre, "how can I blame her? Does one throw one's self into the arms of the burglar who has broken open one's safe and stolen one's diamonds?" Burgoyne still hesitates. Shall he tell the young ranter before him what excellent reasons he has for knowing that any filial disposition on his part to throw himself on Mrs. Le Marchant's neck will be met by a very distinct resistance on that lady's part, or shall he leave him poised on "The jag Of his mountain crag" till morning? The morning light will certainly see him tumbling at the least some few kilometres down. He decides generously to leave him in present possession of his peak; but yet, so inconsistent is human nature, his next speech can have no drift but that of giving a slight jog to his friend's towering confidence. "And your own mother?" It may generally be concluded that a person has not a very pertinent response to give to a question if his only answer to that question be to repeat it in the same words. "My own mother?" "Yes; you will write at once to tell her, I suppose?" For a second the young man's forehead clouds, then he breaks into an excited laugh. "Tell her? I should rather think I should! Do you suppose that I shall lose a moment in telling everybody I know--everybody I ever heard of? I want you to tell everybody too--every single soul of your acquaintance!" "_I?_" "Tell Amelia; tell Cecilia"--quite unaware, in his excitement, of the freedom he is taking, for the first time in his life, with those young ladies' Christian names--"tell the other one--the sick one; tell them all! I want _her_ to feel that all my friends, everybody I know, welcome her--hold out their arms to her. I want them all to tell her they are glad--you most of all, of course, old chap; she will not think it is all right till you have given your consent!"--laughing again with that bubbling-over of superfluous joy. "Do you know--it seems incomprehensible now--but there was a moment when I was madly jealous of you? I was telling _her_ about it to-day; we were laughing over it together in the wood." Burgoyne feels that one more mention of that wood will convert him into a lunatic, quite as indisputable as his companion, only very much more dangerous. "Indeed!" he says grimly. "I should have thought you might have found a more interesting subject of conversation." "Perhaps I was not so very far out either"--possibly dimly perceiving, even through the golden haze of his own glory, the lack of enjoyment of his last piece of news conveyed by Jim's tone--"for she has an immense opinion of you. I do not know anyone of whom she has so high an opinion; she says you are so dependable."