Effie only half heard the words: she was opening the little postern gate, and could at least pretend to herself that she had not heard them. She had no apprehensions, and the young man’s society was pleasant enough. To be worshipped is pleasant. It makes one so much more disposed to think well of one’s self. “Then come away,” she said, holding the gate open, turning to him with a smile of invitation. Her bright face looked brighter against the background of the trees, which were being dashed about against an ominous colourless sky. All was threatening in the heavens, dark and sinister, as if a catastrophe were coming, which made the girl’s bright tranquil face all the more delightful. How was it that she did not see his agitation? At the crisis of a long alarm there comes a moment when fear goes altogether out of the mind. If Effie had been a philosopher she might have divined that danger was near merely from the curious serenity and quiet of her heart. The wooden gate swung behind them. They walked into the dimness of the wood side by side. The wind made a great sighing high up in the branches of the fir-trees, like a sort of instrument--an Eolian harp of deeper compass than any shrieking strings could be. The branches of the lower trees blew about. There was neither the calm nor the sentiment that were conformable to a love tale. On the contrary, hurry and storm were in the air, a passion more akin to anger than to love. Effie liked those great vibrations and the rushing flood of sound. But Fred did not hear them. He was carried along by an impulse which was stronger than the wind. “Miss Ogilvie,” he said, “I have been talking to your father--I have been asking his permission---- Perhaps I should not have gone to him first. Perhaps--It was not by my own impulse altogether. I should have wished first to---- But it appears that here, as in foreign countries, it is considered--the best way.” Effie looked up at him with great surprise, her pretty eyebrows arched, but no sense of special meaning as yet dawning in her eyes. “My father?” she said, wondering. Fred was not skilled in love-making. It had always been a thing he had wished, to feel himself under the influence of a grand passion: but he had never arrived at it till now; and all the little speeches which no doubt he had prepared failed him in the genuine force of feeling. He stammered a little, looked at her glowing with tremulous emotion, then burst forth suddenly, “O Effie, forgive me; I cannot go on in that way. This is just all, that I’ve loved you ever since that first moment at Allonby when the room was so dark. I could scarcely see you in your white dress. Effie! it is not that I mean to be bold, to presume--I can’t help it. It has been from the first moment. I shall never be happy unless--unless----”