‘Ah, but this was before you began to love me,’ said Mary, with a piteous little grimace.  ’This was while you were loving Lesbia as hard as ever you could.  Don’t you remember the day you proposed to her—­a lovely summer day like this, the lake just as blue, the sun shining upon Fairfield just as it is shining now, and you sat there reading Heine—­those sweet, sweet verses, that seemed made of sighs and tears; and every now and then you paused and looked up at Lesbia, and there was more love in your eyes than in all Heine’s poetry, though that brims over with love.’

‘But how did you know all this, Molly?  You were not here.’

’I was not very far off.  I was behind those bushes, watching and listening.  I knew you were in love with Lesbia, and I thought you despised me, and I was very, very wretched; and I listened afterwards when you proposed to her there—­behind the pine trees—­and I hated her for refusing you, and I am afraid I hated you for proposing to her.’

’When I ought to have been proposing to my Molly, blind fool that I was,’ said Hammond, smiling tenderly at her, smiling, though his eyes were dim with tears.  ’My own sweet love, it was a terrible mistake, a mistake that might have cost me the happiness of a lifetime.  But Fate was very good to me, and let me have my Mary after all.  And now let us sit down under the old red beech and talk till it is time to go and get ready for our wedding.  I suppose one ought to brush one’s hair and wash one’s hands for that kind of thing, even when the function is not on a ceremonious scale.’

Mary laughed.

’I have a prettier gown than this to be married in, although it isn’t a wedding gown,’ she said.

‘Oh, by-the-by, I have something for you,’ said her lover, ’something in the way of ornaments, but I don’t suppose you’d care to wear them to-day.  I’ll run and get them.’

He went back to the house, leaving Mary sitting on the rustic bench under the fine old copper beech, a tree that had been standing long before Lady Maulevrier enlarged the old stone house into a stately villa.  He returned in a few minutes, bringing a morocco bag about the size of those usually carried by lawyers or lawyers’ clerks.

‘I don’t think I have given you anything since we were engaged, Mary,’ he said, as he seated himself by her side.

Mary blushed, remembering how Clara, the maid, had remarked upon this fact.

‘You gave me my ring,’ she said, looking down at the massive band of gold, ‘and you have given me ever so many delightful books.’

’Those were very humble gifts, Molly:  but to-day I have brought you a wedding present.’

He opened the bag and took out a red morocco case, and then half-a-dozen more red morocco cases of various shapes and sizes.  The first looked new, but the others were old-fashioned and passing shabby, as if they had been knocking about brokers’ shops for the last quarter of a century.