"To-day's a half-holiday, Kitty--Saturday, you know," says Prescott, with rather a grim smile; for he does not like that rough description of his official duties. "Oh, ah!" says the lady, with great simplicity; "Saturday, ah! Confounded nuisance sometimes! Lost my net veil one Saturday afternoon here in the Row; went to Marshall and Snelgrove's on my way home; all shut up tight as wax!" "You're better than you were yesterday, at the station?" "Oh, yes; I'm all right; I shall do well enough! Wo-ho! steady, old lady!" (this to the mare). "I'm always better in town. Don't let's stand here; I can't hold this mare quiet, and that's the truth; she frets on the curb most awful." "Most awfully, Kitty, not most awful. I've told you of that a hundred times." "Well, most awfully, if you like it better. Steady, Poll! Walk along by my side. Who are you, I should like to know, to pull me up about my talking? What right have you to lecture me about my grammar and that?" "What right?" asks Prescott, suddenly turning white; "none, save the fact of my loving you, Kitty. You know it well enough, though I've never told you in so many words. You know that I _do_ love you! You can't have seen me hanging about you during the last season, making excuses to come to your place, first there and last to go, hating every man who had more chances of talking to you than I had,--you can't have seen all this without knowing that I loved you, Kitty!" The mare is pulled suddenly up; there is no one near them in the blank desert of the Row; and her rider says, "And suppose I _did_ know it,--what then?" Prescott shrugs his shoulders and looks upon the ground, but does not reply. "Have you ever had one word of encouragement from me? Have you ever seen a look of mine which has led you on? Can you say that, suppose I tell you to let me hear no more of this,--as I do tell you at once and for ever,--I have deceived or thrown you over in any one way?" "Never!" "Thank God for that!" says the girl, with some bitterness; "for that's a chalk in my favour, at least. Now look here! I know you, James Prescott; and I know that you're too good a man--too well brought up and fond of home and that sort of thing--to hint any thing but what's right towards me." "Kitty!" "There--I know it. Don't break a blood-vessel with your emotion," she added, gently tapping him on the shoulder with her riding-whip. "All right. Well, suppose we were married, you'd feel very jolly, wouldn't you, while you were down at your office doing your sums and things, which you got so riled when I spoke of just now, to think that Tom Orme, and Claverhouse, and De Bonnet, and a whole lot of fellows, were mooning about this place with me?" "I'd wring all their necks!" says honest Jim Prescott, looking excessively wobegone.