We gradually approached her door. I was telling her that, instead of mere days, I seemed to have known her for years and could not affect to treat her as a stranger. She said that she looked upon me almost as an old friend already. I asked her if she would let me abandon the formal appellation of "Miss Clyde," and call her "Min?" She said, "Yes." I asked her then, ere the door opened, on wishing her "good-bye," with a lingering hand-clasp, whether she would not call me by my Christian name, too? She gently whispered, "Frank"--so softly, so faintly, that the night- wind, sighing by, could not catch the accents and bear the sound to alien ears; but _I_ heard it, and my heart throbbed in a delirious tempest of happiness; I lost my senses almost: my head swam in a whirlwind of tumultuous joy: I was intoxicated with ecstasy! "Good-night, Frank!" I heard her dear, sweet voice whispering, like strains of music in my heart, as I went homewards. I seemed to feel her warm violet breath still on my cheek. I could fancy I yet gazed into the star-depths of her soul-speaking, deep, grey eyes. "Good-night, Frank!" The words sang in my ears all night, and I slept in fairyland. CHAPTER SEVEN. DOUBT. "Thro' light and shadow thou dost range, Sudden glances sweet and strange, Delicious spites and darling angers, And airy forms of flitting change." I had not yet had an opportunity of being introduced to Min's mother. 'Pon my word, you exclaim, this looks very serious! I beg to differ from you. We had been brought together legitimately enough, down at the church-decoration-gathering in the school-room: we had been regularly introduced by no less a clerical authority than little Miss Pimpernell, the vicar's sister: we had then and there associated under the safest chaperonage--good heavens! would not Miss Spight's jealous green eyes, that were certain to pick out the tiniest blot in her fellow man or woman, and Lady Dasher's stately, albeit melancholy presence, satisfy you? Thus, the "convenances," that horrid Anglo-French pseudonym, of the still more horrible bugbear "society," had no cause to consider themselves neglected and find an excuse for taking umbrage. From this point, our acquaintanceship naturally and gradually ripened. We got intimate: it was our fate, I suppose--what more or less would you have expected?