The foliage was beginning to show gleams of gold and red amidst the sombre green of late summer; the hounds were beginning to meet at seven o'clock in the crisper, clearer mornings of September; and Allan Carew was beginning to feel himself the bond-slave of a young lady about whose sentiments towards himself he was still entirely in the dark. Did she care for him much, a little, not at all? Allan Carew was continually asking himself those questions, and there was no oracle to answer him; no oracle even in his inner consciousness, which told him nothing of Suzette's feelings. He knew that he loved her; but he could recall no word or look of hers which could assure him that she returned his love. It was certain that she liked him, and that his society was pleasant to her. They had an infinite series of ideas in common--they thought alike upon most subjects; and she seemed no more to weary of his society than he of hers--yet there were times when he thought he might have been nearer winning her love had she liked him less. Her friendship seemed too frank ever to ripen into love. He would have liked to see her start and blush at his coming. She did neither; but received him with her airiest grace, and had always her laughter ready for his poor jokes, her intellect on the alert for his serious speech about books or men. She was the most delightful companion he had ever known; but a sister could not have been more at her ease with him. "I sometimes think you take me for one of your old convent friends," he said one day, when she had prattled to him of her housekeeping and her garden as they walked up and down the long grass alley, while the music of the organ came to them, now loud with the lessening distance, now sinking slowly to silence as they walked further from the house. "Oh no; I should never take you for any one so patrician and distinguished as Laure de Beauvais, or Athenaïs de Laroche," she answered laughingly, "I should never dare to talk to them about eggs and butter, the obstinacy of a cook at twenty-five pounds a year, the ignorance of a gardener who is little better than a day labourer. But perhaps I am wrong to talk to you of these everyday cares. I will try to talk as I would to Athenaïs. I will dispute the merit of Lamartine's Elegy on Byron as compared with Hugo's Ode to the King of Rome. I was for Hugo; Athenaïs for Lamartine. We used to have terrible battles. And now Athenaïs is married to a financier, and has a palace in the Parc Monceau, and gives balls to all Paris; and I am living with father in a shabby old house with three maids and a man-of-all-work." "Talk to me as you like," he said; "talk to me as your serf, your slave."