‘I am glad.’

‘How much I should like a copy!’

‘If you will accept that?’

‘I could not rob you.’

‘I can make a duplicate.’

‘The look of the place pleases you?’

’Oh! yes; the pines behind it; the sweet little village church; even the appearance of the rustics;—­it is all impressively old English.  I suppose you are very seldom there?’

‘Does it look like a home to you?’

‘No place more!’

‘I feel the loneliness.’

‘Where I live I feel no loneliness!’

‘You have heavenly messengers near you.’

‘They do not always come.’

‘Would you consent to make the place less lonely to me?’

Her bosom rose.  In deference to her maidenly understanding, she gazed inquiringly.

‘If you love it!’ said he.

‘The place?’ she said, looking soft at the possessor.

‘Constance!’

‘Is it true?’

‘As you yourself.  Could it be other than true?  This hand is mine?’

‘Oh!  Percy.’

Borrowing the world’s poetry to describe them, the long prayed-for Summer enveloped the melting snows.

So the recollection of Diana’s watch beside his uncle’s death-bed was wiped out.  Ay, and the hissing of her treachery silenced.  This maidenly hand put him at peace with the world, instead of his defying it for a worthless woman—­who could not do better than accept the shelter of her husband’s house, as she ought to be told, if her friends wished her to save her reputation.

Dacier made his way downstairs to Quintin Manx, by whom he was hotly congratulated and informed of the extent of the young lady’s fortune:  on the strength of which it was expected that he would certainly speak a private word in elucidation of that newspaper article.

‘I know nothing of it,’ said Dacier, but promised to come and dine.  Alone in her happiness Constance Asper despatched various brief notes under her gold-symbolled crest to sisterly friends; one to Lady Wathin, containing the, single line: 

‘Your prophesy is confirmed.’

Dacier was comfortably able to face his Club after the excitement of a proposal, with a bride on his hands.  He was assaulted concerning the article, and he parried capitally.  Say that her lips were rather cold:  at any rate, they invigorated him.  Her character was guaranteed—­not the hazy idea of a dupe.  And her fortune would be enormous:  a speculation merely due to worldly prudence and prospective ambition.

At the dinner-table of four, in the evening, conversation would have seemed dull to him, by contrast, had it not, been for the presiding grace of his bride, whose habitually eminent feminine air of superiority to the repast was throned by her appreciative receptiveness of his looks and utterances.  Before leaving her, he won her consent to a very early marriage; on the plea of a possibly approaching Session, and also that they had waited long.  The consent, notwithstanding the hurry of preparations, it involved, besides the annihilation of her desire to meditate on so solemn a change in her life and savour the congratulations of her friends and have the choir of St. Catherine’s rigorously drilled in her favourite anthems was beautifully yielded to the pressure of circumstances.