'Don't call me Miss Egremont! You never used to. Why should you?' 'I have not dared--' he began. 'Dared! Don't you know you always were our own Mr. Dutton--best, wisest friend of all, and now more than ever.' 'Stay,' he said, 'I cannot allow you in your fervour to say such things to me, unaware of the strength of feeling you are stirring within me.' 'You! you! Mr. Dutton!' cried Nuttie, with a moment's recoil. 'You don't mean that you care for _me_.' 'I know it is preposterous--' he began. 'Preposterous! Yes, that you should care one bit for silly, foolish, naughty, self-willed me. Oh, Mr. Dutton, you can't mean it!' 'Indeed, I would have kept silence, and not disturbed you with my presumption, if--' 'Hush!' she cried. 'Why, it makes me so glad and so proud, I don't know what to do. I didn't think anybody was good enough for you--unless it was dear, dear mother--and that it should be me.' 'It is true,' he said gravely, 'my younger days were spent in a vain dream of that angel, then when all that was ended, I thought such things were not for me; but the old feeling has wakened, it seems to me in greater force than ever, though I meant to have kept it in control--' 'Oh, I am glad you didn't! It seems as if the world swam round with wonder and happiness,' and she held his hand as if to steady herself, starting however as Annaple opened the door saying, 'We've been sending telegrams with the good news.' Then an arch light came into her bright eyes, but the others were behind her, and she said no more. CHAPTER XXXVII. FOUND AND TAKEN. 'The angels of the gateway Bent softly to the child, And stretched glad hands to take him To the kingdom undefiled.'--B. M. 'Come up and see him,' said Nuttie, as the dining-room door was shut. 'I must feast my eyes on him.' Annaple replied by throwing an arm round her and looking into her eyes, kissing her on each cheek, and then, as they reached the landing in the summer twilight, waltzing round and round that narrow space with her. 'You ridiculous person!' said Nuttie. 'Do you mean that you saw!' 'Of course I did; I've seen ever so long--' 'Nonsense! That's impossible--' 'Impossible to owls and bats perhaps, but to nothing else not to see that there was one sole and single hero in the world to you, and that to him there was one single being in the world; and that being the case---' 'But, Annaple, you can't guess what he has always been to me.' 'Oh! don't I know?--a sort of Archbishop of Canterbury and George Heriot rolled into one. So much the more reason, my dear, I don't know when I've been so glad in my life than that your good times should be coming.' 'They are come in knowing this! It is only too wonderful,' said Nuttie, as they stood together among the plants in the little conservatory on the way upstairs. 'I always thought it insulting to him when they teased me about him.' 'They did, did they?'