Gilbert contrived to engage her in the conversation presently.  He found her quite able to discuss the airy topics which he started—­the last new volume of poems, the picture of the year, and so on.  There was nothing awkward or provincial in her manner; and if she did not say anything particularly brilliant, there was good sense in all her remarks, and she had a bright animated way of speaking that was very charming.

She had lived a life of peculiar seclusion, rarely going beyond the village of Lidford, and had contrived to find perfect happiness in that simple existence.  The Captain told Mr. Fenton this in the course of their talk.

“I have not been able to afford so much as a visit to London for my darling,” he said; “but I do not know that she is any the worse for her ignorance of the great world.  The grand point is that she should be happy, and I thank God that she has been happy hitherto.”

“I should be very ungrateful if I were not, uncle George,” the girl said in a half whisper.

Captain Sedgewick gave a thoughtful sigh, and was silent for a little while after this; and then the talk went on again until the clock upon the chimney-piece struck the half-hour after ten, and Gilbert Fenton rose to say good-night.  “I have stayed a most unconscionable time, I fear,” he said; “but I had really no idea it was so late.”

“Pray, don’t hurry away,” replied the Captain.  “You ought to help me to finish that bottle.  Marian and I are not the earliest people in Lidford.”

Gilbert would have had no objection to loiter away another half-hour in the bow-window, talking politics with the Captain, or light literature with Miss Nowell, but he knew that his prolonged absence must have already caused some amount of wonder at Lidford House; so he held firmly to his good-night, shook hands with his new friends, holding Marian Nowell’s soft slender hand in his for the first time, and wondering at the strange magic of her touch, and then went out into the dreamy atmosphere of the summer night a changed creature.

“Is this love at first sight?” he asked himself, as he walked homeward along the rustic lane, where dog-roses and the starry flowers of the wild convolvulus gleamed whitely in the uncertain light.  “Is it?  I should have been the last of men to believe such a thing possible yesterday; and yet to-night I feel as if that girl were destined to be the ruling influence of my future life.  Why is it?  Because she is lovely?  Surely not.  Surely I am not so weak a fool as to be caught by a beautiful face!  And yet what else do I know of her?  Absolutely nothing.  She may be the shallowest of living creatures—­the most selfish, the falsest, the basest.  No; I do not believe she could ever be false or unworthy.  There is something noble in her face—­something more than mere beauty.  Heaven knows, I have seen enough of that in my time.  I could scarcely be so childish as to be bewitched by a pair of gray eyes and a rosy mouth; there must be something more.  And, after all, this is most likely a passing fancy, born out of the utter idleness and dulness of this place.  I shall go back to London in a week or two, and forget Marian Nowell.  Marian Nowell!”