He stopped to pick a primrose, then another, and a violet. Walked rapidly on again, but paused to select a couple of bramble-leaves of a most glorious deep green bronze. Then there was a beautiful privet spray, and another primrose or two, and by degrees, as he hurried on with little pauses, a goodly wild bouquet had been culled, and he smiled as he saw in imagination Sage's delight at his present. "Heaven bless her!" he said, half aloud, and, all unpleasant suspicions gone, he walked on with his eyes half closed, revelling in a kind of day-dream full of delights, the only jarring thought being that he was coming to see Sage before paying his duty to his father at home. "He'll forgive me," he said. "He knows how I love her. Why, what a boy I feel to-day! It's this delicious air that has not been breathed by two million sets of lungs." "There's the farm," he said. "How clean the windows must be to reflect the setting sun like that. Different to mine. I wonder how Mrs Portlock is, and what the old lady will say?" He hurried on, eager to reach the narrow cross where the Kilby lane and the one he was in intersected, and, once there, he meant to mount the high bank, and wait by the old mossy oak pollard, watching for Sage's steps, so as to give her a surprise by throwing the bouquet of wild flowers at her feet, and then-- And then?--Alas! how pleasant is that habit of castle-building in the air. How brightly the edifices are raised, how quickly, how dismally they fall! Luke had planned all so well, and hurried on along the soft, mossy border of the lane, heedless of the winter's dirt, till he reached the cross, turned sharply, and then stopped short, uttering a low moan as he reeled against the hedge, clutching at the thorns for a support. PART ONE, CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR. AN INVITATION. Cyril Mallow's plan of playing what he called a waiting game had the effect he anticipated, and when he thought that the time was ripe he sent a very tenderly-worded letter, full of gentle reproach, to Sage, telling her that he had fought, no one knew how hard, to master his feelings, but that it was all in vain; that he could not bear his existence there, and that he was going abroad--anywhere, he said--and he wished it was out of the world.