These rambles had an inexpressible charm--a mingled sense of freedom and occupation. Then the repose of evening, as night closed in; the amusement of watching Ella at her work or drawing; to lead her on to unconsciously picturesque reminiscences; to compare their utterly different impressions and ideas--for Ella was not self-opinionated; though frank and individual, she was aware her convictions were but the echo of those she had heard all her life, and she listened with the deepest interest to her husband's, even while she did not agree. These pleasant communings were so new to Wilton, so different from all his former experience, that perhaps time has seldom sped on so lightly during a honeymoon. Ella was utterly unconventional, and yet a gentlewoman to the core, transparently candid, and, if such a term can be permitted, gifted with a noble homeliness that made affectation, or assumption, or unreality of any kind, impossible to her. Whether she made a vivid, free translation from some favorite Italian poet at Wilton's request, or took a lesson from him in tying flies, or gave him one in drawing, or dusted their sitting-room, or (as Wilton more than once found her) did some bit of special cooking in the big, brown kitchen, while Manon looked on, with her hands in her apron-pockets, talking volubly, she was always the same--quiet, earnest, doing her very best, with the inexpressible tranquillity of a single purpose. Then the shy tenderness and grace of her rare caresses--the delicate reserve that had always something yet to give, and which not even the terrible ordeal of wedded intimacy could scorch up--these were elements of an inexhaustible charm--at least to a man of Wilton's calibre. It was evening--the evening of a very bright, clear day. Wilton had started early on a distant expedition, with a son of their host for a guide, and had returned to a late dinner. It had been too long a walk for Ella to undertake, and now she sat beside her husband under the window of their _salon_, in the violet-scented air of an April night, as it grew softly dusk. Wilton was enjoying pleasant rest, after just enough fatigue to make it welcome, and watching, with a lazy, luxurious sense of satisfaction, the movements of Ella's little deft fingers, as she twisted some red ribbon into an effective bow, and pinned it upon an edifice of lace, which Wilton could not quite make out. "What can that thing be for, Ella? You are not going to wear it?" he asked, at last. "Wear it? Oh, no! It is for Manon; she begged me to make her a Parisian cap. I advised her to keep to her charming Norman head-dress; but no! Monsieur le Curé's house-keeper has a cap from Paris, and Manon is not to be outdone; so she gave me the lace, and I contributed the ribbon. Do you know, this lace is very lovely? Look at it." "I suppose it is; but I am glad to find you admire lace; I was afraid you were above dress."