“Oh yes, I remember something of it; but I was not aware that the surveillance had gone so far. Mr. Hammerton was being deceived, I think, Amy said. There was a plot against him, she thought; but, poor girl, she was so deeply in love with him.” “He felt annoyed that she had interfered in his private doings,” said Arthur; “he thought it was officious, I suppose.” “Was that all?” asked Phœbe. “Then he did not love her.” Arthur had too much regard for his old friend even now to hint that Lionel thought Amy was influenced by mere worldly motives. “And you think he really loves Amy now?” said Phœbe, half-aloud, half to herself. “Not as I love you,” said Arthur; “but our love, dearest, is a love apart from any other love; it seems to me that nobody in the whole world is blessed like I am with a love so generous, so noble. What have I done that I should deserve so much happiness?” “Dear Arthur!” was all Phœbe could say, and then for a time they forgot all the world but themselves and the trees and flowers and grasses and the distant hills and the spring sky above them, with the hopeful lark in the sunshine, and the nightingale singing in the shade. What a delightful path it was, that old familiar way by which they returned to the farm! Wood-sorrel, buttercups, sweet woodroof, primroses, and violets bespangled and scented the way; green grasses and ferns shot out like emerald spikes and crooks from amongst dead leaves that autumn winds had left in out-of-the-way corners. The lake in the shadow of the hills shone here and there through the trees like glints of silver, and the sunbeams sparkled white and shimmery on the windows of Barton Hall. At length the lovers stopped beside a rustic stile near the foot of the hills--one of those old-fashioned, moss-grown, lichen-coloured stiles, which give such additional charms to straggling hedge-rows, with great clumps of flowering hawthorn here and there at the top, and patches of red and brown and amber in the old roots at the bottom. Beneath a bending branch of budding May-flowers Arthur pointed out the spot where he had sat for hours to paint and think of her in the summer-time, and she saw that the place commanded a full view of the room where she mostly sat.