"How about other things?" Diana felt a pang at her heart, an odd desire to make some wild answer. But nothing could be cooler than what she said. "I take them as I find them, Mr. Knowlton." He was helping her now again. "What did you suppose I was thinking of, when I told you I wanted the best I could have?" "I had no right to suppose anything. No doubt it is true of all sorts of things." "But I was thinking of _one_--did you guess what?" Diana hesitated. "I don't know, Mr. Knowlton,--I might guess wrong." "Then what made you say, 'no doubt' I could have it?" "I don't know, Mr. Knowlton," said Diana, feeling irritated and worried almost past her power to bear. "Don't you always have what you want?" "Do you think I can?" he said eagerly. "I fancy you do." "What _did_ you think I meant by the 'best' thing, then? Tell me--do tell me?" "I thought you meant Miss Gertrude Masters," Diana said, fairly brought to bay. "You did! And what did you think I thought of Miss Diana Starling?" He had stopped picking blackberries now, and was putting his questions short and keenly. Diana's power of answering had come to an end. "Hey!" said he, drawing her hand from the bush and stopping her work; "what did you think I thought of _her?_--I have walked with her, and driven with her, and talked with her, in the house and out of the house, now all summer long; I have seen what she is like at home and abroad; what do you think I think of _her?_" Baskets and berries had, figuratively, fallen to the ground; literally too, in Mr. Knowlton's case, for certainly both his hands were free, and had been employed while these words were spoken in gently and slowly gathering Diana into close bondage. There she stood now, hardly daring to look up; yet the tone of his questions had found its way to her inmost heart. She could not refuse one look, which they asked for. It gave her what she never forgot to her latest day. "Does she know now?" he went on in a tone of mixed tenderness and triumph, like the expression of his face. "My lily!--my Camellia flower!--my sweet Magnolia!--whatever there is most rare, and good, and perfect. My best of all things. Can I have the best, Di?" Miss Gertrude Masters would have been equal to the situation, and doubtless would have met it with great equanimity; Diana was unused to most of the world's ways, and very new to this. She stood in quiet dignity, indeed; but the stains of crimson on cheek and brow flushed and paled like the lights of a sunset. All at the bottom of her deep sun-bonnet; was Mr. Knowlton to blame if he gently pushed it back and insinuated it off, till he had a full view? "You know what is my 'best' now," he said. "Can I have it, Diana?" She tried to break away from him, and on her lip there broke that beautiful smile of hers; withal a little tremulous just then. It is rare on a grown woman's lip, a smile so very guileless and free; mostly it belongs to children. Yet not this smile, either.