“This is a surprise,” she said smilingly as she gave him her hand. “I quite thought you were a hundred miles away at the least. That’s about the distance, is it not, to—to—I forget its name—the place where you are now living?” They turned together and strolled slowly along. “That is about the distance,” he smilingly replied. “Duty ought, perhaps, to have kept me at Withington Chase, but inclination has brought me to St. Oswyth’s. I did not forget that this is your birthday, Miss Ethel; as a proof of which I venture to offer you these few flowers. Will you deign to accept them with the giver’s best wishes for your health and happiness.” As he spoke he stripped the paper off the bouquet and offered it for Ethel’s acceptance. She took it without a shadow of hesitation, first coming to a stand and placing on the lawn the basket in which she had been gathering her own flowers. “Oh, how lovely—how exquisitely lovely!” she exclaimed with unfeigned admiration. Flowers such as those were a revelation to her. “It was very very kind of you, Mr. Lisle, to remember my birthday in such a charming fashion. My aunts will be as delighted as I am. Of course you will come in and see them now that you are here.” Even now there was no dawn of suspicion in her heart as to the real purport of his visit. Everard’s courage sank a little, but he had come all the way from the Chase to seek his opportunity, and now that he had found it he was not the man to let it slip through his fingers. “One moment, if you please,” he pleaded. “There is something that I wish particularly to say to you.” “Yes?” she said interrogatively, turning her gaze full upon him, with the slightest inflection of surprise in her voice. Then, all at once, she saw that in his eyes which revealed to her what it was he was about to say to her, and before the clear intense flame of love which glowed in their depths, her own eyes sank abashed and dismayed. To her it came, indeed, as a revelation. For a moment or two all the pulses of her being seemed to stand still. She said to herself, “I am dreaming—presently I shall awake.” Everard took her hand and she did not know it. From her unresisting fingers he withdrew the bouquet and placed it on the basket at her feet. It was only when he began to speak that she came to herself. Between the spot where they were standing and the house a large clump of evergreens intervened. From none of the windows could they be overlooked. Everard, reading in her face some portion of that which was passing through her mind, gave her a few moments in which to recover herself; before saying more. Then, not without misgivings, he resumed: “It was more, far more, than merely to congratulate you on your birthday and offer you a few flowers that brought me here to-day. It was to tell you that I love you—that I have loved you in secret for years—it was to ask you to be my wife.”