Margaret’s stratagem had quite succeeded in one way, and the girl looked on Granville henceforth as an engaged man. But this made an enormous difference to her. Absurdly conscious of her lack of means, and fearful lest anyone should think that she looked forward to matrimony as a deliverance from her daily toil, her manner to the few men she had met had been almost repellant. But if Mr. Gray were engaged, he could not (she thought, in the innocence of her heart) imagine that she had any designs on him. And so the constraint which had hitherto affected her manner to him wore off; she met him as frankly and as unaffectedly as she did his sister. Margaret had given him a hint to persuade Catherine to come with them the next day, and as she came downstairs, she found him waiting in the hall. “Why, are you not ready yet?” he asked, seeing that she was without her hat. “I—did not think of coming to-day,” she said, hesitating, and smiling to conceal the disappointment in her tone. “Oh, but you must, please! Margaret will be so disappointed—we shall both be disappointed if you don’t. Look outside; can you resist it?” The sun was shining on the twin peaks at the head of the valley, the sky was a brilliant blue, the air dry and clear with that sweet freshness peculiar to mountainous places. Catherine wavered in her decision. “Come,” said Granville decidedly, “run up and get your hat, and I will have coffee for you by the time you come down. We have only ten minutes before we must start.” The girl, feeling half ashamed of her own weakness, yet, at the same time, happy and pleased, returned in a minute, equipped for the day. Margaret’s confidences and Granville’s own cordiality had broken down the barrier. Catherine soon found herself talking quite easily and naturally to the brother of her friend, while he, on his part, realised that his early prejudices were fast disappearing. How fresh and unaffected the girl was, and how simplicity and wisdom mingled in her conversation! They talked of books, and he was surprised to find how apt and sympathetic her criticisms were, though they betrayed at every moment the speaker’s ignorance of the world, and her extravagantly ideal view of human nature. Margaret, walking beside them, would listen quietly, now and then putting in some shrewd comment or witty parenthesis, which set them all laughing, and relieved the strain of a too intense conversation. So five days passed, the intimacy deepening hourly, while every evening brought its gift of quiet converse on the starlit verandah, and every morning its glad summons to another day of enthusiastic activity. Catherine counted these days as a miser counts his gold. The High School, and all the premature anxieties and responsibilities that poverty had laid upon her seemed so far away. Now, for the first time, she realised what life might mean, what for some few it did mean.