“No,” answered Valentine with perfect confidence; “but she knows that I promised my father to wait a few months more before I decidedly engaged myself, but for that promise I was to have had an answer from her half a year ago.”

Brandon fully believed that Dorothea Graham loved his brother, and that her happiness was in his own hands.  He had found it easy to put the possibility of an early marriage in Valentine’s way, but nothing could well go forward without his sanction, and since his return he had hitherto felt that the words which would give it were too difficult for him to say.  Now, however, that remarkable letter, cutting in across the usual current of his thoughts, had thrown them back for awhile.  So that Dorothea seemed less real, less dear, less present to him.

The difficult words were about to be said.

“If she knows why you do not speak, and waits, there certainly is an understanding between you, which amounts almost to the same thing.”

“Yes,” said Valentine, “and in August, as she knows, I shall ask her again.”

“Then,” said Brandon, almost taking Valentine’s breath away with sudden delight, “I think, old fellow, that when she has once said ‘yes,’ you had better make short work with the engagement; you will never be more ready to marry than you are now; you are a few months older than John was when he went and did it; and here you are, with your house in New Zealand ready built, your garden planted, a flock of sheep bought, and all there is to do is to turn out the people now taking care of the place, as soon as you are ready to come in.”

Brandon was standing on a little plank which bridged a stream about two feet wide; he had turned to say this, for Valentine was behind him.

Valentine received the communication first with silence, then with a shout of triumph, after which he ran completely round his brother several times, jumping over the stream and flourishing a great stick that he held, with boyish ecstasy, not at all dignified, but very sincere.  When he had made at least three complete circles, and jumped the stream six times, Giles gravely walked on, and Valentine presently followed, wiping his forehead.

“Nobody could have expressed my own sentiments in more charming English,” he exclaimed; “I never heard such grammar in my life; what a brick you are, St. George!”

Giles had great faith in his theory that absence always cured love, also in his belief that his was cured and half forgotten.  At that moment he experienced a sharp pang, however, that was not very like forgetfulness, but which Valentine converted almost into self-scorn when he said—­

“You know, Giles, she always did show the most undisguised liking for me from our first meeting; and then look how constant she has been, and what beautiful letters she writes, always trying, too, to improve me.  Of course I cannot even pretend to think she would not have engaged herself to me months ago if I might have asked her.”