 for we had not met for some time.

‘Was that Mrs. Graham you were speaking to just now?’ said he, after the first few words of greeting had passed between us.

‘Yes.’

‘Humph!  I thought so.’  He looked contemplatively at his horse’s mane, as if he had some serious cause of dissatisfaction with it, or something else.

‘Well! what then?’

‘Oh, nothing!’ replied he.  ‘Only I thought you disliked her,’ he quietly added, curling his classic lip with a slightly sarcastic smile.

‘Suppose I did; mayn’t a man change his mind on further acquaintance?’

‘Yes, of course,’ returned he, nicely reducing an entanglement in the pony’s redundant hoary mane.  Then suddenly turning to me, and fixing his shy, hazel eyes upon me with a steady penetrating gaze, he added, ‘Then you have changed your mind?’

‘I can’t say that I have exactly.  No; I think I hold the same opinion respecting her as before—but slightly ameliorated.’

‘Oh!’  He looked round for something else to talk about; and glancing up at the moon, made some remark upon the beauty of the evening, which I did not answer, as being irrelevant to the subject.

‘Lawrence,’ said I, calmly looking him in the face, ‘are you in love with Mrs. Graham?’

Instead of his being deeply offended at this, as I more than half expected he would, the first start of surprise, at the audacious question, was followed by a tittering laugh, as if he was highly amused at the idea.

‘I in love with her!’ repeated he.  ‘What makes you dream of such a thing?’

‘From the interest you take in the progress of my acquaintance with the lady, and the changes of my opinion concerning her, I thought you might be jealous.’

He laughed again.  ‘Jealous! no.  But I thought you were going to marry Eliza Millward.’

‘You thought wrong, then; I am not going to marry either one or the other—that I know of—’

‘Then I think you’d better let them alone.’

‘Are you going to marry Jane Wilson?’

He coloured, and played with the mane again, but answered—‘No, I think not.’

‘Then you had better let her alone.’

‘She won’t let me alone,’ he might have said; but he only looked silly and said nothing for the space of half a minute, and then made another attempt to turn the conversation; and this time I let it pass; for he had borne enough
