He had a great time, a glorious time,--and was longing to tell the tale of it to sympathetic ears, when he set forth from his own doorstep on the present mild October afternoon; he heard himself dilating and explaining, introducing names which would lead to inquiries, carelessly referring to charming girls--oh, he foresaw a delightful hour, whether it were in the Abbey drawing-room, or better still with his favourite auditor in a woodland solitude--and now? Now somehow, he did not care to begin. Was Leo in one of her moods? If so it was no use thinking of anything else; he knew by experience what those moods were. Could he bring her round? Sometimes he could, sometimes not. Was she really pleased to see him back, or--? He could not endure that "or?" In short, the whole magnificent house of cards wherewith our young man had so pleased himself an hour before, showed now a flimsy shanty not worth a moment's preservation; and stripped of all importance, reduced to insignificance, afraid of his own voice, he slunk along by Leonore's side. "Why don't you speak?"--she flung at him at last. "You--you are so strange!" He faltered, then tried to rally. "What's the matter, Leo? Something is, I'm sure. You might tell me. You know I'm always sorry when you are, and----" "What makes you think I am?" But she spoke more gently, and emboldened, he proceeded:-- "You did look pleased at first, but directly I spoke, you seemed to fly off at a tangent. I suppose I said something rotten, I often do--but you might have known I didn't mean it." "It was not what you _said_." She paused. "What was it then?" "You look--every one looks--so happy and content--so bursting with prosperity, so supremely filled with--oh, can't you see, can't you see, that I'm alone and miserable, and different? When you pretended to admire me just now----" "Pretended? I didn't pretend!" indignantly. "You said I looked 'uncommonly fit'." "So you did,--so you do." "And who cares? What's the good of it? If it signified a jot to any single human being how I looked----" "Leo! _you know I care!_" She had done it, she had provoked it. If she had taken a chisel in her hand and dug out the admission by bodily force, she could not have been more directly responsible than she now was--and yet she stopped short startled. It was but for a moment however. "You?" she cried, "you could hardly say less than that, considering it was such a direct fish for a compliment,--no,--no, Val; do be quiet and let me speak,--what I mean is that really, _really_, you know, I am most awfully down in my luck, and I don't see the slightest prospect of anything better. I had hoped that somehow a way would open----" "It would, if you would marry me." "Marry you? Nonsense!" "Good gracious, Leo! _Nonsense?_" "Of course. Can't you see I'm in earnest, and talk rationally for once?" "Hang it all, am I not talking rationally, as rationally as ever I did in my life?"