"I think, sir," put in the young man, modestly, "you’d better let me have that. It was my proposal, you know." "Oh, very well," said Mr. Bethune, carelessly; and as carelessly he handed over the slip of paper he had just taken from the waiter. But the quick look of pain and humiliation that swept over the girl’s face stabbed the young man to the heart. "Grandfather!" she said, with a burning flush. "Oh, well," her grandfather said, petulantly; "I have just discovered that I have left my purse behind. Some other time—it is all the same—it is immaterial—the next time will be my turn—" "Here is my purse, grandfather," she said; and she turned with an air of quiet firmness to her younger neighbour, and merely said "If you please!" He was too bewildered to refuse: there was something in her manner that compelled him to accede without a word of protest. She pushed her purse and the slip of paper across the table to her grandfather; and then she rose, and turned to seek her sun-shade, which Vincent forthwith brought to her. The curious mingling of simplicity and dignity with which she had interposed impressed him strangely: perhaps she was not so much of a school-girl as she had seemed when he first saw her walking through Hyde Park? Then the three of them left the restaurant together; and quietly made their way home through the gathering twilight. But he would not go in when they arrived at their door, though the old man again put Scotch music and Scotch whisky before him as an inducement. Perhaps he dreaded to outstay his welcome. He bade them both good-night; and Maisrie Bethune, as she parted from him, was so kind as to say "Thank you so much!" with the briefest, timid glance of her all-too-eloquent eyes. He went across to his own rooms—merely for form’s sake. He did not light the gas when he got upstairs. He carefully shut the window; then he sate down to the piano; and very gently and quietly he played a graceful little air. It was "_Dormez, dormez, ma belle!_"; and it was a kind of farewell message for the night; but he had made sure that she should not hear. CHAPTER V. QU’ MON COEUR EN MARIAGE. When Maisrie Bethune and her grandfather returned home after the little dinner at the restaurant she went upstairs to her own room, while he proceeded to summon the landlady’s husband from the lower deeps. Forthwith the pallid-faced and nervous-eyed Hobson appeared; and he seemed to be more obsequious than ever towards the great man who had deigned to patronise his humble literary efforts, and had even got some of his verses printed in the Edinburgh _Weekly Chronicle_.