“It must be late--I must go home,” she said. And when she looked about among the ghostly trees which waved and bent overhead, sombre and colourless in the dark--she thought, with a thrill of horror, that hours must have passed since she came here. Rollo too was slightly alarmed. They were neither of them in a condition to measure time; and though so much had happened, it had flown like a moment. They came out from among the trees in the happy gloom, arm-in-arm. Nobody could recognise them, so dark as it was--and indeed nobody was in the way to recognise them--and the Abbey clock struck as they emerged upon the Dean’s Walk, reassuring them. Rollo was still in time for dinner, though Lottie might be too late for tea; and the relief of discovering that it was not so late as they thought gave them an excuse for lingering. He walked to the Lodges with her, and then she turned back with him; and finally they strayed round the Abbey in the darkness, hidden by it, yet not so entirely hidden as they thought. Only one little jar came to the perfect blessedness of this progress homeward. “Shall you tell them?” Lottie whispered, just before she took leave of her lover, with a movement of her hand towards the Deanery. This gave Rollo a _serrement de cœur_. He replied hastily, “Not to-night,” with something like a shiver, and then he added, “Where shall I see you to-morrow?” This question struck Lottie with the same shock and jar of feeling. Would not he come and claim her to-morrow? This was what she had thought. She did not know what to reply, and a sudden sensation of undefined trouble--of evil not yet so entirely over as she hoped--came into her mind; but he added, before she could speak-- “In the old place--that blessed corner which I love better than any other in the world. Will you come while everybody is at the Abbey, Lottie? for we must talk over everything.”