“Yes, I have it,” he replied.  “And haven’t I as good a right to it as any?”

He extended his arm for the case which Marguerite held, and so touching her hand, the touch was more lingering than it needed to be; but he avoided looking at her, or he would have seen that the late color had fled till the face was whiter than marble.

“Your old propensities,” said Mrs. McLean.  “You always will be a boy.  By the way, what do you think of Mary Purcell’s engagement?  I thought she would always be a girl.”

“Ah!  McLean was speaking of it to me.  Why were they not engaged before?”

“Because she was not an heiress.”

Mr. Raleigh raised his eyebrows significantly.

“He could not afford to marry any but an heiress,” explained Mrs. McLean.

Mr. Raleigh fastened the case and restored it silently.

“You think that absurd?  You would not marry an heiress?”

Mr. Raleigh did not at once reply.

“You would not, then, propose to an heiress?”

“No.”

As this monosyllable fell from his lips, Marguerite’s motion placed her beyond hearing.  She took a few swift steps, but paused and leaned against the wall of the gable for support, and, placing her hand upon the sun-beat bricks, she felt a warmth in them which there seemed to be neither in herself nor in the wide summer-air.

Mrs. Purcell came along, opening her parasol.

“I am going to the orchard,” said she; “cherries are ripe.  Hear the robins and the bells!  Do you want to come?”

“No,” said Marguerite.

“There are bees in the orchard, too,—­the very bees, for aught I know, that Mr. Raleigh used to watch thirteen years ago, or their great-grand-bees,—­they stand in the same place.”

“You knew Mr. Raleigh thirteen years ago?” she asked, glancing up curiously.

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Very well.”

“How much is very well?”

“He proposed to me.  Smother your anger; he didn’t care for me; some one told him that I cared for him.”

“Did you?”

“This is what the Inquisition calls applying the question?” asked Mrs. Purcell.  “Nonsense, dear child! he was quite in love with somebody else.”

“And that was——?”

“He supposed your mother to be a widow.  Well, if you won’t come, I shall go alone and read my ‘L’Allegro’ under the boughs, with breezes blowing between the lines.  I can show you some little field-mice like unfledged birds, and a nest that protrudes now and then glittering eyes and cleft fangs.”

Marguerite was silent; the latter commodity was de trop.  Mrs. Purcell adjusted her parasol and passed on.