“Then you were dreaming of me?” “Oh no. At, least I don’t know,” she said, the colour flushing into her face, as she sat upright, now quite awake and alive to the question, between truthfulness and maidenly modesty. “You were--you were; you don’t deny it!” And as she hung her head and grew more distressfully redder and redder, “You know what that means.” “Indeed--indeed--I couldn’t help--I never meant! Oh--” It was an exclamation indeed, for Uncle Clement’s head appeared above the hammock, where he too had been dozing over his book, with the words-- “Halloo, young people, I’m here!” Franceska would have fled, but Ivinghoe held her hand so tight that she could not wrench it away. He held it, while Clement struggled to the ground, and then said-- “Sir, there is no reason you or all the world should not know how I love this dearest, loveliest one. I came here this morning hoping that she may grant me leave to try to win her to be my own.” He looked at Francie. Her head drooped, but she had not taken her hand away, and the look on her face was not all embarrassment, but there was a rosy sunrise dawning on it. All Clement could say was something of “Your father.” “He knows, he understands; I saw it in his eyes,” said Ivinghoe. To Clement the surprise was far greater than it would have been to his sister, and the experience was almost new to him, but he could read Francie’s face well enough to say-- “My dear, I think we had better let you run in and compose yourself, or go to your aunt, while I talk to Lord Ivinghoe.” Trembling, frightened, Francie was really glad to be released, as her lover with one pressure said-- “I shall see you again, sweetest.” She darted away, and Clement signed to Ivinghoe to sit down with him on the bench under the tree. “I should like this better if you had brought your father’s full assent,” he said. “There was no time. I only read his face; he will come to-morrow.” “No time?” “Yes, to catch the train. I hurried away the moment I learnt that--that her affections were not otherwise engaged. I never saw any one like her. She has haunted me ever since those days at Rockquay; but--but I was told that she cared for your nephew, and I could not take advantage of him in his absence. And now I have but three days more.” “Whoever told you was under a great error,” said Clement gravely, “and you have shown very generous self-command; but the advantages of this affair are so much the greatest on one side, that you cannot wonder if there is hesitation on our part, till we explicitly know that our poor little girl would not be unwelcome to your parents.” “I know that no one can compare with her for--for everything and anything,” stammered Ivinghoe, breaking from his mother’s language into his father’s, “and my father admires her as much as I do--almost.” “But what will he and your mother say to her being absolutely penniless?” “Pish!”