But he is persevering. "Don't you think that a little improving conversation with me would tend to make her happier still?" he asks, banteringly, yet in earnest. "I tried to get Gerard to introduce me, but I could not make out exactly what was up; he seemed to take it as a personal insult. You won't mind doing me that good turn, I'm sure?" "I shall be most happy, of course," she answers, hiding her displeasure under the calm smile which covers all her emotions, or approximations to emotion. And with apparent readiness she leads the way to the spot where, couched in her rushy lair, the subject of their talk sits unconscious, with her eyes riveted on the darting forms beneath her. "Miss Craven, Mr. Linley wishes to be introduced to you." "To _me!_" she says, starting; her eyes opening wide, and cheeks flushing with surprise. Then two bows are executed, and the thing is done. Esther is not longer upon the all-alone stone; she has other occupation for her ears than to listen to the screeching of the Canada geese; she, too, like the other butterflies, has got a tight-trousered, short-coated patrician in tow. "Linley has succeeded, do you see?" says the man to whom Esther's legs have had the happiness to appear "very good." "Mostly does; it is a little way he has!" "Who did they say she was?" "Somebody's companion; old Blessington's, I think." "Cunning old beggar! He knows what he is about, though he does pretend to be stone-blind." "Old Blessington's companion, eh? I'm sure I wish she were mine." "A sort of 'Abishag the Shunammite,' I suppose?" These are some of the comments that the unknown beauty draws forth. Five minutes later, Miss Craven's scruples--such as never having skated before, having no skates, &c.--being overruled by her new acquaintance, she is sitting on the bank; and he, kneeling before her, is fastening some one else's unused skates on her little feet. A great desire for pleasure has come over her--a great longing for warmth and colour in her grey life, that looks all the greyer now in the contrast to the brilliant reds and purples of these strange lives with which it is brought into sudden contact. A great delight in the wintry brightness fills her--in the shifting, varying hues--in the bubbling laughter; a great impulse to laugh too, the spirit of youth rising up in arms against the tyranny of grief.