"How far is it?" she asks, indolently, divided between her hatred of walking and her desire to frustrate the _tête-à-tête_ she sees impending between St. John and Esther. "Three or four miles; four, I suppose." She lifts her large blue eyes languidly, "Four miles there, and four miles back! Are you mad, St. John? What do you suppose one is made of?" "Will _you_ take pity on me then, Miss Craven?" turning eagerly to Esther. She tilts her hat low down over her little, straight, Greek nose, looks up at him with shy coquetry under the brim, but answers not. "A man who delights in solitude must be either a wild beast or a god, don't you know? I have no pretence to be either: I hate my own society cordially. Come" (with a persuasive ring in his pleasant voice); "you had much better." "Don't be so absurd, St. John!" cries Miss Blessington, pettishly. "Miss Craven would far rather be left in peace." "Would you?" (appealing to her.) "No--o; that is--I mean--I think I should like the walk, if I may. May I, Lady Gerard? do you mind?" (turning sweet red cheeks and quick eyes towards her hostess.) "I, my dear! Why should I mind?" responds Miladi, leaning back and fanning herself with a large fan (I believe that fat women often suffer a foretaste of the torments of the damned in the matter of heat)--"so as you don't ask me to go with you (with a fat smile). And, St. John, be sure that you are back in time for dinner, there's a good boy! You know what a fuss Sir Thomas is always in on Sunday evening?" "I know that Sir Thomas is digging his grave with his teeth as fast as he can," answers St. John disrespectfully. "Shall not we be rather late for church if we have four miles to go?" asks Esther, as she steps out briskly beside her companion, while heart and conscience keep up a quarrelsome dialogue within her. "It is not four miles; it is only three." "You told Miss Blessington four?" "So I did; but I drew for the extra mile upon the rich stores of my imagination." "Why did you?" she asks, turning a wondering rosy face set in the frame of a minute white bonnet towards him. "Did you ever hear of the invitations that the Chinese give one another?" he asks, laughing, and switching off a fern-head with a baby umbrella--"which, however pressing they may be, are always expected by the giver to be declined. My invitation to Conny was a Chinese one: I was not quite sure that she would understand it as such, and I was so afraid that she would yield to my importunities, that I had to embroider a little in the matter of distance; do you see?" There has been rain in the morning; now the clouds have rent themselves asunder, and broken up into great glistering rocks, peaks, and spires, such as no fuller on earth could white: "Blue isles of heaven laugh between."