They had met at a country house and had played golf together, and then they had met again a month later at another house, in March, but she could not remember any love-making--she could not remember any of those warm looks and those surreptitious hand-clasps when occasion was propitious, which Elsie Goldmore had told her men were so prodigal of in demonstrating when they fell in love. Indeed, she had seen emotion upon the faces of quite two or three young men, for all her secluded life and restricted means, since she had left the school in Dresden, where a worldly maiden aunt had pinched to send her, German officers had looked at her there with interest in the street, and the clergyman's three sons and the Squire's two, when she returned home. Indeed, Tom Clarke had gone further than this! He had kissed her cheek coming out of the door in the dark one evening, and had received a severe rebuff for his pains. She had read quantities of novels, ancient and modern. She knew that love was a wonderful thing; she knew also that modern life and its exigencies had created a new and far more matter-of-fact point of view about it than that which was obtained in most books. She did not expect much, and had indulged in none of those visions of romantic bliss which girls were once supposed to spend their time in constructing. But she did expect _something_, and here was nothing--just nothing! The day John had asked her to marry him he had not been much moved. He had put the question to her simply and calmly, and she had not dreamed of refusing him. It was obviously her duty, and it had always been her intention to marry well, if the chance came her way, and so leave a not too congenial home. She had been to a few London balls with the maiden aunt, a personage of some prestige and character. But invitations do not flow to a penniless young woman from the country, nor do partners flock to be presented to strangers in those days, and Amaryllis had spent many humiliating hours as a wall-flower and had grown to hate balls. She was not expansive in herself and did not make friends easily, and pretty as she was, as a girl, luck did not come her way. When she had said "Yes" in as matter-of-fact a voice as the proposal of marriage had been made to her, Sir John had replied: "You are a dear," and that had seemed to her a most ordinary remark. He had leaned over--they were climbing a steep pitch in search of a fugitive golf ball--and had taken her hand respectfully, and then he had kissed her forehead--or her ear--she forgot which--nothing which mattered much, or gave her any thrill! "I hope I shall make you happy," he had added. "I am a dull sort of a fellow, but I will try."