"This beats all," he said; "I never thought you would pull it off, Janet. I thought he was too big a fish to land. And to think you will queen it at Easthope Park." Janet was not in the least perturbed by her brother's remarks. She was accustomed to them. He always talked like that. She vaguely supposed she should some day "queen it" at Easthope. The expression did not offend her. The reflection in her mind was: "George must love me very much to have chosen me, when all the most splendid ladies in the land would be glad to have him." And now, as she walked on this Sunday afternoon in the long, quiet gardens of Easthope, she felt her cup was full. She looked at her affianced George with shy adoration from under the brim of her violent new hat, and made soft answers to him when he spoke. George was not a great talker. He trusted mainly to an occasional ejaculation, his meaning aided by pointing with a stick. A covey of partridges ran with one consent across the smooth lawn at a little distance. "Jolly little beggars," said George, with explanatory stick. She liked the flowers best, but he did not, so he took her down to the pool below the rose garden, where the eager brook ran through a grating, making a little water prison in which solemn, portly personages might be seen moving. "See 'em?" said George, pointing as usual. "Yes," said Janet. "That's a three-pounder." "Yes." That was all the stream said to them. She lingered once more in the rose-garden when he would have drawn her onwards towards the ferrets, and George, willing to humour her, got out his knife and chose a rose for her. Has any woman really lived who has not stood once in silence in the June sunshine with her lover, and watched him pick for her a red rose which is not as other roses, a rose which understands? Amid all the world of roses, did the raiment of God touch just that one, as He walked in His garden in the cool of the evening? And did the Divine love imprisoned in it reach forth towards the human love of the two lovers, and blend them for a moment with itself? "You are my rose," said George, and he put his arm round her, and drew her to him with a rough tenderness. "Yes," said Janet, not knowing to what she said "yes," but vaguely assenting to him in everything. And they leaned together by the sun-dial, soft cheek against tanned cheek, soft hand in hard hand. Could anything in life be more commonplace than two lovers and a rose? Have we not seen such groups portrayed on lozenge-boxes, and on the wrappers of French plums? And yet, what remains commonplace if Love but touch it as he passes? Let Memory open her worn picture-book, where it opens of itself, and make answer. * * * * *