Mary, however, never would commit herself to that enthusiasm for Val which his grandmother felt was her boy’s due. She liked him very well, she said--oh, very well: he was a nice boy; she was very glad he had done so well at school, and she hoped he would take a good place at Oxford; but I leave the reader to judge whether this mild approbation was likely to satisfy the old people, who by this time--husband as well as wife--were, as the servants said, altogether “wrapt up” in Val. Mary offended her friend still more by the perverse interest she took in the Pringle family, and her many visits to the Hewan, where Val was delighted to accompany her as often as she chose to go. Violet was “in residence,” as he said, at the cottage, living a somewhat lonely life there, though the others of the family came and went, spending a day or a night as they could manage it. I do not know if any thought of “falling in love” had ever come into Valentine’s boyish head; but there was a delicate link of affection and interest between Violet and himself which affected him he could not quite tell how. As for poor little Vi, I fear her young imagination had gone further than Valentine’s. It was not love in her case, perhaps, any more than in his; but it was fancy, which at seventeen is almost as strong. I think this was the primary reason of Mary’s frequent visits to the Hewan. She saw what was going on in the girl’s young head and heart; and with that intense recollection of the circumstances which decided her own fate which such gentlewomen, thrown out of the common path of life, often have, she had conceived an almost exaggerated anxiety for the fate of Vi, which seemed to be shaping itself after the model of her own. “I wish my dear old lady would not spoil that boy so,” she said one September morning, when she had walked alone through the woods to the Hewan. Her pretty _particular_ grey gown (for Mary was not without something of that precise order which it is usual to call old-maidishness, about her dress) was marked here and there with a little spot from the damp ferns and grass, which she rubbed with her handkerchief as she spoke, and which suddenly brought back to Violet’s memory that one day of “playing truant” which had been about the sweetest of her life. Mary had perceived that Violet gave a quick look for the other figure which generally followed, and that there was a droop of disappointment about her, when she perceived that her visitor was alone. “I wish she would not spoil that boy so. He is not a bad boy----” “Is it possible you can mean Val?” said Violet, with dignity, erecting her small head. “Yes, indeed, my dear, it is quite possible; I do mean Val. He is a good boy enough, if you would not all spoil him with adulation--as if he were something quite extraordinary, and no one had ever seen his like before.” “You do not like Val, Miss Percival--you never did; but he likes you, and always walks with you when you will let him.”