The dominie eagerly but properly arose, answering:  “Miss Du Plessis does too much honour to my humble poetic judgment, and, in regard to your doggrel, shows her rare good sense.”  He then walked across the room to the object of his laudation, and, taking Coristine’s vacated chair, remarked that few poets preach a sermon so simply and beautifully as the author of “The Excursion.”  Would Miss Du Plessis allow him to bring down his pocket volume of the Rydal bard?  Miss Du Plessis would be charmed; so the schoolmaster withdrew, and soon reappeared with the book all unconsciously open at “She was a phantom of delight.”  With guilty eyes, he closed it, and, turning over the pages, stopped at the fifth book of “The Excursion,” announcing its subject, “The Pastor.”  It was now the lady’s turn to be uncomfortable, with the suggestion of Mr. Perrowne.  The lawyer, whose back had been turned to the poetic pair, looked unutterable things at Miss Carmichael, who, not knowing to what extreme of the ludicrous her companion might lead her, suggested a visit to the garden, if Mr. Coristine did not think it too warm.  “It’s the very thing for me,” answered the lawyer, as they arose together and proceeded to the French windows opening upon the verandah; “it’s like ’Come into the garden, Maud.’” They were outside by this time, and Miss Carmichael, lifting a warning finger, said:  “Mr. Coristine, I am a school teacher, and am going to take you in hand as a naughty boy; you know that is not for Sunday, don’t you now?”

“If it was only another name that begins with the same letter,” replied the incorrigible Irishman, “I’d say the line would be good for any day of the week in fine weather; but I’m more than willing to go to school again.”

“Sometimes,” said the schoolteacher quietly, “sometimes the word ‘garden’ makes me sad.  Papa had a great deal of trouble.  He lost all his children but me, and almost all his property, and he had quarrelled with his relations in Scotland, or they had quarrelled with him; so that he was, in spite of his public life, a lonely, afflicted man.  When he was dying, he repeated part of a hymn, and the refrain was ’The Garden of Gethsemane.’”

“Ah, Miss Carmichael, dear, forgive me, the stupid, blundering idiot that I am, to go and vex your tender heart with my silly nonsense.  I’m ashamed, and could cry to think of it.”

“I will forgive you, Mr. Coristine,” she replied, recovering from her serious fit, and looking at the victim in a way that blended amusement with imperiousness:  “I will forgive you this once, if you promise future good behaviour.”