"How de-do, Miss Craven?" says Linley, throwing himself off his horse, and coming towards her with ready right hand heartily outstretched. "Could not imagine who you were. I thought, perhaps, you were the spirit of a departed Blessington, and as I am rather nervous, and frightened out of my wits at ghosts, I had half a mind to turn and flee." "Only curiosity got the better of fear," she says, smiling up at him, or rather down on him, through the steaming January evening; "you thought I might prove human, after all?" "Why did not you come and see me the other day when I came to call upon you?" he asks, walking along beside her; "I believe you were at home all the time." In his heart he does not in the least believe it. She does not answer; but, without thinking of what she is doing, picks off the berries, the procuring of which had cost her so many wounds, and strews them along the road. "Were you _really_ at home?" he repeats, a misgiving as to such having been the case crossing his mind, and giving his vanity a slight prick. "Yes, I was." "And knew I was there all the time?" "Yes." "A prey to Mrs. Blessington----?" "Yes." "And never came to my rescue?" "Did you expect the butler and housekeeper to come and entertain you?" she asks, a little bitterly. "Have you forgotten what I told you the other day--that I am Mrs. Blessington's _valet?_ I have as little concern with her visitors as the kitchen-maids have." "But I was not _her_ visitor," objects the young fellow, stoutly--"at least" (laughing) "I _was_, but Heaven knows I did not mean to be! However, 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' and I obtained a great deal of information gratis upon a subject on which I really never had reflected as seriously as, it appears, I ought to have done----" "Draughts and sandbags! I know what you are going to say," interrupts Esther, breaking into a childish lighthearted laugh. "We do hear a great deal about them; but I don't mind now; I'm used to it. I fall into a sort of waking trance when the subject is first broached, and say 'Yes' and 'No,' and 'H'm' and 'Oh,' at stated intervals; it does just as well as listening all through." Linley laughs too. He is always glad of an excuse for laughing. Life has been to him as yet only laughable or smileable. "Not a bad plan," ha says, commendingly; "but, really now, I flattered myself I struck out one or two very original thoughts on the subject of sash-windows; I said several rather brilliant things, only she did not seem to see them. I hoped she would have found my conversation so improving that she would have asked me to come again; but she did not do anything of the kind."