'But I have been waiting to know you a long time,' the Captain was bold enough to say: 'ever since I was a man. And the longer one waits to know a woman, the faster he gets to know her when he begins.' 'But I have not been waiting any time at all to know you, and yet--' began Hilda. But there she broke off, and said, 'You will think I have no manners, Captain Bramston. I have forgotten to ask you on what errand you are come here. And will you not step into the house and have some refreshment? I expect my father back in an hour or so.' 'Miss Kildhurm, have I offended you?' said the Captain very humbly. 'No, indeed, anything but that!' 'Else you would not speak so formally.' 'I must not speak as I might speak, if my father were here,' answered the young lady with a blush. 'I am the representative of the family until he comes, and I must speak for them and not for myself.' 'Then--I wish your father were here!' exclaimed the Captain. 'So do I.' 'Why do you wish it? So that you might get rid of me? or so that you might not continue to be the representative of your family?' 'That does not seem to me a very wise question. But will you not step into the house?' 'You were sitting under the Oak when I first saw you: would you mind letting me come there?' 'Wherever you wish,' replied Miss Kildhurm graciously; and she led the way to the Oak, and she and the Captain established themselves beneath its shadow. The Captain thought it was the loveliest day and the loveliest spot that he had ever seen; which simply showed that he must have been a very unobservant young man hitherto, because, in his travels about the world, he had met with scenes and with climates far lovelier than Kildhurm could boast of at its best. But the Captain, though he praised the prospect, looked at it much less than at his companion; and if he had said that his travels had never brought him in contact with anybody like her, he would probably have been declaring more nearly what he felt to be the truth. She was so simple, and yet so dignified: so naïve, and yet so sensible: so lovely, and yet so unconscious. He gazed, and wondered, and blessed his stars for having brought him round the world, and reserved this fairest of all sights for him at the end of his pilgrimages and dangers. Yes, it was a blessed fortune that had put it into his mind to come and settle down here, in this remote and beautiful region, here to make his home and to spend his days. And it was a beneficent Providence, surely, that had kept his heart free and unstained through those perilous years of early youth, when hearts are so apt to go astray. What happiness to think that he might say to this charming maiden, 'You are the first woman I have loved; and I am not wholly unfit to take your hand in mine, and to look in your dear eyes!' For it was nothing less than this that the Captain already imagined himself as saying to Miss Kildhurm.