After this there were many meetings, long confidences, much talk of the past and of the present, but no hint about the future; interviews at which the dogs were the only assistants, their gambols making interludes of sportiveness in the midst of gravity. Herrick kept a close watch upon himself, and breathed not one word of love, he knew instinctively that to reveal himself as a lover would be to scare his innocent mistress, and end this sweet midsummer dream of his in terror and confusion. It was as her friend, her trusted companion, that he won her young heart, and when, on the eve of his return to London, they parted--with paleness and tears held back on her side, and on his with all the tokens of passion kept in check--it was still as her friend that he bade her good-bye. "When I come back to Lavendale it may perchance be in a new character," he said, "would fortune only favour me." "Why should you wish to change?" she asked. "Or is it that you are thinking of some new book or play which is to make you famous?" Herrick blushed, recalling that play which had done most for his renown. He felt at this moment that he would rather put his right hand in the flames like Cranmer than win money or fame by such another production. But he was a creature of impulses, and the good impulses had just now the upper hand. He felt purified, lifted out of himself, in this virginal presence. Yet as he walked back to the Manor after that tender parting--tender, albeit no word of love was spoken--his thoughts, in spite of himself, took an earthlier strain. She had paled when they parted, and there had been a look in her eyes which revealed the dawn of love. He could not doubt that she was fond of him. Why should he not have her? A post-chaise at a handy point, a few passionate words of entreaty, tears, despair, a threat of suicide perhaps, and then off to London as fast as horses could carry them, and to handy Parson Keith, who had just set up that little chapel in Mayfair which was to be the scene of so many distinguished marriages, dukes and beauties, senators and dukes' daughters, and who boasted that his chapel was better than a bishopric. Why should he not so win her? There was no chance that he would ever win her by any fairer means. And if he, Herrick, from highflown notions of honour hung back and let her be taken to London by the Squire, she would be run after by all the adventurers in town, a mark for the basest stratagems, or perchance given to some worn-out roué with a high-sounding title--money trucked against strawberry-leaves. No, these strained notions of chivalry became not a penniless devil, a man who, as his enemies said, had to go tick for the paper on which he wrote his lampoons. If he meant to win her he should win her how and when he could, should strike at once and boldly, as your true Irish heiress-hunter stalks his quarry, seizing the first propitious moment, taking fortune's golden tide at the flood.