‘Mr. Jasper,’ she said, and she had regained entire self-command, ‘this is a proud and happy day for all of us—for you, for Eve, and for me. I have been revolving in my mind how to mark it and what memorial of it to give to you as a pledge of peace established, misunderstandings done away. I have been turning over my desk as well as my mind, and have found what is suitable. My uncle won this at a shooting-match. He was a first-rate shot.’ ‘And the prize,’ said Jasper, ‘has fallen into hands that make very bad shots.’ ‘What do you mean? Oh!’ Barbara laughed and coloured. ‘You led me into that mistake about yourself.’ ‘This is the bad shot I mean,’ said Jasper: ‘you have brought Miss Eve here to me, and neither does Eve want me, nor do I her.’ Barbara opened her eyes very wide. ‘Have you quarrelled?’ she inquired, turning to see the faces of Jasper and her sister. Both were smiling with a malicious humour. ‘Not at all. We are excellent friends.’ ‘You do not love Eve?’ ‘I like Eve, I love someone else.’ The colour rushed into Barbara’s face, and then as suddenly deserted it. What did he mean? A sensation of vast happiness overspread her, and then ebbed away. Perhaps he loved someone at Buckfastleigh. She, plain, downright Barbara—what was she for such a man as Jasper had approved himself? She quickly recovered herself, and said, ‘We were talking about the pipe.’ ‘Quite so,’ answered Jasper. ‘Let us return to the pipe. You give it me—your uncle’s prize pipe?’ ‘Yes, heartily. I have kept it in my desk unused, as it has been preserved since my uncle’s death; but you must use it; and I hope the tobacco will taste nice through it.’ ‘Miss Jordan,’ said Jasper, ‘you have shown me such high honour, that I feel bound to honour the gift in a special manner. I can only worthily do so by promising to smoke out of no other pipe so long as this remains entire, and should an accident befall it, to smoke out of no other not replaced by your kind self.’ Eve clapped her hands. ‘A rash promise,’ said Barbara. ‘You are at liberty to recall it. If I were to die, and the pipe were broken, you would be bound to abjure smoking.’ ‘If you were to die, dear Miss Jordan, I should bury the pipe in your grave, and something far more precious than that.’ ‘What?’ ‘Can you ask?’ He looked her in the eyes, and again her colour came, deep as the carnations that had strewed her head. ‘There, there!’ he said, ‘we will not talk of graves, and broken pipes, and buried hearts; we will get the pipe to work at once, if the ladies do not object.’ ‘I will run for the tinder-box,’ said Eve eagerly. ‘I have my amadou and steel with me, and tobacco,’ Jasper observed; ‘and mind, Miss Barbara is to consecrate the pipe for ever by drawing out of it the first whiff of smoke.’ Barbara laughed. She would do that. Her heart was wonderfully light, and clear of clouds as that sweet still evening sky.