Mr. Sandford had to go to his office daily with the full consciousness that his unwelcome guest was making the most of his opportunities. Still he hoped things might come right in the end. Poor Mr. Drayton hardly regretted his accident since it placed him near _her_, Margaret, the lady of his dreams. For love had come to him in a violent fashion, and he acknowledged to himself that if she would not listen to him he would be miserable all his life. Love plays such strange pranks in its flight. In this case it gave the self-confident man timidity; his noisy laugh was modified, his manner softened. He was very much in earnest. Margaret never for one moment thought of his meaning anything. She was very sorry for him, as any kind-hearted girl might be for the sufferings of any one or even any _thing_, and this pity gave her voice a still more dangerous softness. Each day found him longing to speak to her and losing courage when she came near him. He was longing to know what the _arrangement_ meant that Mr. Sandford had dwelt upon. Longing to hear from her, about herself and her future, because, once he knew that, his course would be plain. If there was really nothing in which her heart was interested would it not be possible to alter things? She was so young she could not already have met her fate. She was so often with Mrs. Dorriman he seldom saw her alone; it was with a throb of pleasure that he saw her come into the drawing-room alone one afternoon, some snowdrops and ivy-leaves in her hand. She had been walking, and she had thrown back her cloak and pushed her hat off her head a little, and she came forward to fill some glasses with her flowers, unconscious of his emotion, full of some thought which had suggested itself to her whilst she was out, and a smile breaking the gentle gravity which was her habitual expression. "There are still many glasses to fill," he said, as, lying a prisoner upon the sofa, he watched her accustomed fingers arranging and re-arranging the pure, white blossoms with the glossy background of leaves. She looked up with a little smile and a heightened colour. "Those are to stand empty till to-morrow; Grace wishes it. I thought you would like a few to look at, but to-morrow Grace is going to arrange all the flowers." "What is that for? Is to-morrow a great festivity? Miss Grace does not generally give herself any trouble for nothing," he said laughing. "My sister takes trouble when she thinks it necessary," said Margaret, with a pretty, dignified reproach, quick to resent the slightest implied disapprobation of her beloved Grace; "to-morrow will be my birthday. I shall be seventeen," she said, with full consciousness of her advanced years. "Seventeen," he murmured, "only seventeen!" "Did you think I looked more or less than that?" she asked gaily.