The sunshine and the general brightness of the day had its due effect on George Dallas, who was young, for a nineteenth-century man almost romantic, and certainly impressible. His spirits rose within him, as, his breakfast finished, he started off to walk to Poynings. Drinking in the loveliness of the broad sun-steeped landscape, the sweet odours coming towards him on the soft breeze, the pleasant sound, were it chink of blacksmith's hammer, or hum of bees, or voice of cuckoo hidden deep in distant bright-leaved woods, the young man for a time forgot his baser associations and seemed to rise, in the surroundings of the moment, to a better and purer frame of mind than he had known for many years. Natural, under such circumstances, was the first turning of his thoughts to his mother, to whose deep love and self-sacrifice he was indebted for the freedom which at length was about to be his. In his worst times there had been one bright spot of love for her in all the black folly of his life, and now the recollection of her disinterestedness and long suffering on his behalf made her as purely dear to him as when, in the old days that seemed so long ago, he had said his prayers at her knee. He recollected walking with her in their garden on mornings like these, when they were all in all to each other, soon after his father's death, when that chastening memory was on them both, and before there was any thought of Mr. Carruthers or his niece--or his niece!--and straightway off went his thoughts into a different channel. What a pretty girl! so soft and quiet, so fresh withal, and frank, and guileless, so different from--Well, he didn't know; with similar advantages Harriet might have been very much the same. But Miss Carruthers was certainly specially charming; the talk which they had had together showed that. The talk which they had together? Was he not entering her own domain? What if she were to meet and recognize him there? That would spoil all their plans. A word from her would--O no! Though Mrs. Carruthers might not have been intended as a conspirator by nature, George felt by his recent experience of his mother's movements that she would have sufficient foresight to prevent Clare from leaving the house, just at that time, lest she might discover the rendezvous in the shrubbery. The tact that had so rapidly shifted the venue of their last meeting from the bustle of the draper's to the calm solitude of the dentist's would assuredly be sufficient to prevent a young girl from intruding on their next appointment.