Margery’s face flushed up, and her neck and arms glowed in sympathy. The quickness of youthful imagination, and the assumptiveness of woman’s reason, sent her straight as an arrow this thought: ‘He wants to marry me!’

She had heard of similar strange proceedings¹, in which the orange-flower and the sad cypress² were intertwined. People sometimes wished on their death-beds, from motives³ of esteem⁴, to form a legal tie which they had not cared to establish as a domestic one during their active life.

For a few minutes Margery could hardly be called excited; she was excitement itself. Between surprise and modesty⁵ she blushed and trembled by turns. She became grave, sat down in the solitary⁶ room, and looked into the fire. At seven o’clock she rose resolved, and went quite tranquilly⁷ upstairs, where she speedily began to dress.

In making this hasty toilet nine-tenths of her care were given to her hands. The summer had left them slightly brown, and she held them up and looked at them with some misgiving⁸, the fourth finger of her left hand more especially. Hot washings and cold washings, certain products from bee and flower known only to country girls, everything she could think of, were used upon those little sunburnt hands, till she persuaded herself that they were really as white as could be wished by a husband with a hundred titles. Her dressing⁹ completed, she left word with Edy that she was going for a long walk, and set out in the direction of Mount Lodge¹⁰.

She no longer tripped like a girl, but walked like a woman. While crossing the park she murmured ‘Baroness von Xanten’ in a pronunciation of her own. The sound of that title caused her such

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