"No," said Dallas, "I am not indebted for the pleasure--for the happiness--of this day to Mr. Page. No one guided me here, but I happened to pass the gate, and a very civil old gentleman, who was doing some gardening at the lodge, asked me in." His looks said more than his words dared to express, of the feelings with which his chance visit had inspired him. But the girl did not see his looks; she was idly playing with Sir Lancelot's mane, and thinking. "Well," she said at last, settling herself in the saddle in a way unmistakably preliminary to departure, "if you would like to see the picture-gallery, and will walk round that way, through those trees, to the front of the house"--she pointed out the direction with the handle of her riding-whip--"I will go on before, and tell my uncle he is about to have a visitor to inspect his treasures." "You are very kind," said Dallas earnestly, "and you offer me a very great pleasure. But Sir Thomas Boldero may be engaged--ay think it an intrusion." "And a thousand other English reasons for not accepting at once a civility frankly offered," said the girl, with a delightful laugh. "I assure you, I could not gratify my uncle more than by picking up a stray connoisseur; or my aunt than by bringing to her a gentleman of sufficient taste to admire her trees and flowers." "And her niece, _Miss Carruthers_," thought George Dallas. "So pray go round to the house. Don't forget your coat. I see it upon the ground--there. It has got rubbed against the damp bark, and there's a great patch of green upon it." "That's of no consequence," said George gaily; "it's only an Amherst coat, and no beauty." "You must not make little of Amherst," said the girl, with mock gravity, as George stood rubbing the green stain off his coat with his handkerchief; "we regard the town here as a kind of metropolis, and have profound faith in the shops and all to be purchased therein. Did dear old Evans make that coat?" "A venerable person of that name sold it me," returned George, who had now thrown the coat over his arm, and stood, hat in hand, beside her horse. "The dear! I should not mind letting him make me a habit," she said. "Good-bye, for the present--that way," again she pointed with her whip, and then cantered easily off, leaving George in a state of mind which he would have found it very difficult to define, so conflicting where his thoughts and emotions. He looked after her, until the last flutter of her skirt was lost in the distance, and then he struck into the path which she had indicated, and pursued it, musing.