"And then you used to have snug talks with Margaret over the fire on wet afternoons, and I don't believe poor little me was missed a bit. Margaret can be very entertaining when she likes." "A broomstick!" "Mr Dorrien! That's rude." "Excessively. But in evoking the latent barbarian, for whom you just now expressed--er--a flattering partiality--you have once more provided yourself with further amusement." Her only answer is a merry laugh, and for a few minutes neither speak. The whirr of a reaping machine--for the early harvest has already begun--and the sound of reapers' voices is borne up from the valley, with now and then the barking of a farmhouse dog. The rallying note of a covey of scattered partridges, the distant cawing of rooks, and the hum of bees gathering their stores from the cells of the blossoming heather, all blend into a luxurious harmony, well in keeping with the still witchery of the waning afternoon. They are outside the world, for the time being, these two--away in a cloudland of their own, bounded by the purple heather around and the sapphire sea below, the ordinary considerations of mere prosaic, everyday life as far removed as the distant sights and sounds in the valley beneath. Stay, though. One of them cannot altogether shut out these obtrusive considerations. Roland, cool and cynical beyond his years, cannot forget that the brightest picture has its reverse side, and that there will be a morrow to this cloudless day of radiance and of love. He has striven to cherish a vague and desperate hope that something may occur tending to smooth matters--yet it is hardly likely. That unlucky stay at Ardleigh--how far back it looked now--seemed somehow to have committed him to the fulfilment of his father's wish; in the latter's eyes, that is, for he stood committed in nobody else's. Moreover, as General Dorrien's hints on the subject grew plainer, so did his animosity towards the Ingelows increase, and this to such a pitch that more than once a terrible rupture was imminent, as Roland found himself compelled to listen to his father's violent and unreasoning tirades. Still, he managed to conceal his feelings. But every hour confirmed him in the certainty that the day he decisively announced his intention of running counter to his father's cherished scheme, that day would see him disinherited. And now a sweet, serious look has come over Olive's face, and it seems as if the bright, merry-hearted girl had been changed, all in a minute, into a tender, thoughtful, loving woman, who knew the world and its sorrows well.