“Yonder is some beautiful moss,” observes Mr. Brandon to me. “I’ll get it for you if you like.” I do like; and, while he and Rupert are scrambling up the hillside, I watch them, and catch such scraps of the conversation at the pool as the following: _Charley._ “I’ve stood a great deal, but, by Jove! I think it is time for me to have a definite answer of some kind.” _Sylvia._ “Oh, dear me, Charley, what is the good of beginning like this! You promised faithfully not to worry any more until we got home.” _Charley._ “_I_ promise such a thing as that, with Lanier at hand to make love to you all the time! I’ll be hanged if I did!” _Sylvia._ “That was my understanding—but it does not matter. I suppose I need not expect any peace at any time. Mr. Lanier has gone over to Mrs. Cardigan; I think that ought to set your mind at rest about _him_.” _Charley._ “Fiddlesticks for Mrs. Cardigan! Lanier cares no more for her than I do! Sylvia, long as I have known you, I don’t quite know what to make of you yet. Sometimes I think you are a heartless flirt!” _Sylvia._ “Thank you very much.” _Charley._ “Then again I feel inclined to trust you with—everything. Just now that inclination is particularly strong. If you hold out a sign of encouragement, I will indulge it with the greatest pleasure.” _Sylvia._ “But what is ‘everything?’ Such an indefinite offer is rather more alarming than gratifying. Don’t tell me now, however. Let us go back, and some other time—” _Charley._ “That is what you always say—‘Some other time,’ but the time never comes, and I am half inclined to believe that it never will come. This time is as good as any other, and, if you care for me—” _Sylvia_ (coolly). “I never said that I did, other than ‘as a younger brother,’ as I heard a sentimental lady say the other day of the man with whom she was flirting.” I do not hear Charley’s reply to this, for Mr. Brandon and Rupert return laden with mosses and ferns, over which we hold an animated discussion until a shout from the direction of the cave makes us turn, and we see three handkerchiefs waving a signal of recall. Then, like Lord Ullin in the ballad, we lift our voices and cry to Charley and Sylvia, “Come back! come back!”—a summons which one, at least, of them is ready enough to heed. They come, and we walk on. I—who loiter behind my escort in order to be sure of finding safe footing on the treacherous rock—learn that their conversation has not waxed more amicable. “I am tired of the subject!” I hear Sylvia say, petulantly, “and I will _not_ be browbeaten into giving an answer when I am not ready to do so. You must wait my time, or do without an answer at all.”