At last,—­“You are fond of scenery, Miss Holabird?”

Rosamond laughed.

“O yes, I suppose I am; but we don’t call this scenery.  It is just pleasantness,—­beauty.  I don’t think I quite like the word ‘scenery.’  It seems artificial,—­got up for outside effect.  And the most beautiful things do not speak from the outside, do they?  I never travelled, Mr. Mucklegrand.  I have just lived here, until I have lived into things, or they into me.  I rather think it is travelling, skimming about the world in a hurry, that makes people talk about ‘scenery.’  Isn’t it?”

“I dare say.  I don’t care for skimming, myself.  But I like to go to nice places, and stay long enough to get into them, as you say.  I mean to go to Scotland next year.  I’ve a place there among the hills and lochs, Miss Rosamond.”

“Yes.  I have heard so.  I should think you would wish to go and see it.”

“I’ll tell you what I wish, Miss Holabird!” he said suddenly, letting go his moustache, and turning round with sufficient manfulness, and facing her.  “I suppose there is a more gradual and elegant way of saying it; but I believe straightforward is as good as any.  I wish you cared for me as I care for you, and then you would go with me.”

Rosamond was utterly confounded.  She had not imagined that it could be hurled at her, this fashion; she thought she could parry and put aside, if she saw anything coming.  She was bewildered and breathless with the shock of it; she could only blindly, and in very foolish words, hurl it back.

“O, dear, no!” she exclaimed, her face crimson.  “I mean—­I don’t—­I couldn’t!  I beg your pardon, Mr. Mucklegrand; you are very good; I am very sorry; but I wish you hadn’t said so.  We had better go back.”

“No,” said Archie Mucklegrand, “not yet.  I’ve said it now.  I said it like a moon calf, but I mean it like a man.  Won’t you—­can’t you—­be my wife, Rosamond?  I must know that.”

“No, Mr. Mucklegrand,” answered Rosamond, quite steadily now and gently.  “I could not be.  We were never meant for each other.  You will think so yourself next year,—­by the time you go to Scotland.”

“I shall never think so.”

Of course he said that; young men always do; they mean it at the moment, and nothing can persuade them otherwise.

“I told you I had lived right here, and grown into these things, and they into me,” said Rosamond, with a sweet slow earnestness, as if she thought out while she explained it; and so she did; for the thought and meaning of her life dawned upon her with a new perception, as she stood at this point and crisis of it in the responsibility of her young womanhood.  “And these, and all the things that have influenced me, have given my life its direction; and I can see clearly that it was never meant to be your way.  I do not know what it will be; but I know yours is different.  It would be wrenching mine to turn it so.”