‘I am just off but I could not help calling to see how you are. What! burning your laurels, the testimony to your triumph?’ ‘Triumph! rather transitory; finishes in smoke,’ and she pushed two or three of the unburnt leaves amongst the ashes and covered them over. He stooped down, picked up a leaf, smoothed it between his fingers, and then raised his eyes. They met hers at that instant, as she lifted them and looked in his face. They were near one another, and his hands strayed towards hers till they touched. She did not withdraw; he clasped the hand, she not resisting; in another moment his arms were round her, his face was on hers, and he was swept into self-forgetfulness. Suddenly the horn of the coach about to start awoke him, and he murmured the line from one of his speeches of the night before— ‘But by immortal Providence she’s mine.’ She released herself a trifle, held her head back as if she desired to survey him apart from her, so that the ecstasy of union might be renewed, and then fell on his neck. The horn once more sounded, she let him out silently, and he was off. Mrs Hopgood and Clara presently came downstairs. ‘Mr Palmer came in to bid you good-bye, but he heard the coach and was obliged to rush away.’ ‘What a pity,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘that you did not call us.’ ‘I thought he would be able to stay longer.’ The lines which followed Frank’s quotation came into her head,— ‘Sweet lord, you play me false.’ ‘No, my dearest love, I would not for the world.’ ‘An omen,’ she said to herself; ‘“he would not for the world.”’ She was in the best of spirits all day long. When the housework was over and they were quiet together, she said,— ‘Now, my dear mother and sister, I want to know how the performance pleased you.’ ‘It was as good as it could be,’ replied her mother, ‘but I cannot think why all plays should turn upon lovemaking. I wonder whether the time will ever come when we shall care for a play in which there is no courtship.’ ‘What a horrible heresy, mother,’ said Madge. ‘It may be so; it may be that I am growing old, but it seems astonishing to me sometimes that the world does not grow a little weary of endless variations on the same theme.’