So that it was all clear sailing. What would come, would come, but the bliss which I should presently taste of, knowing Jessie to be mine and mine only--the bliss which I was enjoying already in anticipation--was all sufficient. Outside our own two personalities there was nothing else to be considered. Nothing else? No one else? No; for this one greatest of all joys secured, all difficulties which once seemed to threaten to mar its fulfilment _must_ melt away, as surely as snow melts before the sun. I pleased myself with this commonplace metaphor, and utterly overlooked the common sense of things (common sense, indeed, in this case being the very slave of sentiment)--utterly overlooked the possibility that the current of others' feelings, of others' likes and dislikes, of others' ideas of right and wrong, could run in a different direction from that down which I was sailing with my hopes realised. It is thus, I suppose, sometimes with other selfish natures than mine. I was up and out early in the morning. I could not sleep the night before, and wishing to give Jessie a bouquet of fresh flowers, I had determined to walk to Covent-garden to buy them. I had a bouquet made of the sweetest and loveliest flowers, and I took it to our house by the back way, and hid it in my workroom. How many times I looked at it, and how in every delicate leaf I found a sentiment which formed a connecting link between me and Jessie, it is unnecessary here to describe. In the afternoon I had to go to the jeweller's for the watch for Jessie, the inscription on which could not be completed before; and when I held it in my hand and read the words, 'From Chris to Jessie, on her eighteenth birthday. With undying love,' I saw Jessie's beautiful eyes looking into mine, and I uttered an exclamation of delight which must have satisfied the jeweller that his work was approved of. Then there was the ivory brooch shaped in the form of a true lover's knot. Perhaps Jessie would allow me to fasten it in the bosom of her dress, as she had allowed me to take the ribbon from her neck, which was now round mine, with the locket she had given me on my birthday. No one but I had yet seen or knew of these offerings of love. It was to be a day of delightful surprises. I was at home with my flowers before breakfast. 'What made you go out so early this morning, Chris?' Jessie inquired over breakfast. 'That's a secret,' I answered gaily; 'you shall know to-night.' My mother had already questioned me in private, and I had easily satisfied her. Something unusual occurred when we had finished breakfast. Jessie went to uncle Bryan's side, and spoke to him. 'Do you know it's my birthday to-day, uncle Bryan?' 'I have heard so.' Then after a short pause: 'May it be a day of good remembrance to you!'