“Do you love me, Dolly?” the young man insisted.

Dolly turned her glance to him tenderly, then withdrew it in haste.  “I think I might, in time,” she answered very slowly.

“Then you will be mine, mine, mine?” Walter cried in an ecstasy.

Dolly bent her pretty head in reluctant assent, with a torrent of inner joy.  The sun flashed in her chestnut hair.  The triumph of that moment was to her inexpressible.

But as for Walter Brydges, he seized the blushing face boldly in his two brown hands, and imprinted upon it at once three respectful kisses.  Then he drew back, half-terrified at his own temerity.

XX.

From that day forth it was understood at Upcombe that Dolly Barton was informally engaged to Walter Brydges.  Their betrothal would be announced in the “Morning Post”—­“We learn that a marriage has been arranged,” and so forth—­as soon as the chosen bride had returned to town, and communicated the great news in person to her mother.  For reasons of her own, Dolly preferred this delay; she didn’t wish to write on the subject to Herminia.  Would mamma go and spoil it all? she wondered.  It would be just like her.

The remaining week of her stay at the rectory was a golden dream of delight to Dolly.  Beyond even the natural ecstasy of first love, the natural triumph of a brilliant engagement, what visions of untold splendor danced hourly, day and night, before her dazzled eyes!  What masques of magnificence! county balls, garden parties!  It was heaven to Dolly.  She was going to be grander than her grandest daydream.

Walter took her across one afternoon to Combe Mary, and introduced her in due form to his mother and his step-father, who found the pink-and-white girl “so very young,” but saw no other grave fault in her.  He even escorted her over the ancestral home of the masters of Combe Mary, in which they were both to live, and which the young squire had left vacant of set purpose till he found a wife to his mind to fill it.  ’Twas the ideal crystallized.  Rooks cawed from the high elms; ivy clambered to the gables; the tower of the village church closed the vista through the avenue.  The cup of Dolly’s happiness was full to the brim.  She was to dwell in a manor-house with livery servants of her own, and to dress for dinner every night of her existence.

On the very last evening of her stay in Dorsetshire, Walter came round to see her.  Mrs. Compson and the girls managed to keep discreetly out of the young people’s way; the rector was in his study preparing his Sunday sermon, which arduous intellectual effort was supposed to engage his close attention for five hours or so weekly.  Not a mouse interrupted.  So Dolly and her lover had the field to themselves from eight to ten in the rectory drawing-room.