She had acknowledged it to herself, and had acknowledged it to him,—­as the reader will perhaps say without much delay.  But the courtship had so been carried on that no delay had been needed.  All the world had smiled upon it.  When Mr Crosbie had first come among them at Allington, as Bernard’s guest, during those few days of his early visit, it had seemed as though Bell had been chiefly noticed by him.  And Bell in her own quiet way had accepted his admiration, saying nothing of it and thinking but very little.  Lily was heart-free at the time, and had ever been so.  No first shadow from Love’s wing had as yet been thrown across the pure tablets of her bosom.  With Bell it was not so,—­not so in absolute strictness.  Bell’s story, too, must be told, but not on this page.  But before Crosbie had come among them, it was a thing fixed in her mind that such love as she had felt must be overcome and annihilated.  We may say that it had been overcome and annihilated, and that she would have sinned in no way had she listened to vows from this new Apollo.  It is almost sad to think that such a man might have had the love of either of such girls, but I fear that I must acknowledge that it was so.  Apollo, in the plenitude of his power, soon changed his mind; and before the end of his first visit, had transferred the distant homage which he was then paying from the elder to the younger sister.  He afterwards returned, as the squire’s guest, for a longer sojourn among them, and at the end of the first month had already been accepted as Lily’s future husband.

It was beautiful to see how Bell changed in her mood towards Crosbie and towards her sister as soon as she perceived how the affair was going.  She was not long in perceiving it, having caught the first glimpses of the idea on that evening when they both dined at the Great House, leaving their mother alone to eat or to neglect the peas.  For some six or seven weeks Crosbie had been gone, and during that time Bell had been much more open in speaking of him than her sister.  She had been present when Crosbie had bid them good-bye, and had listened to his eagerness as he declared to Lily that he should soon be back again at Allington.  Lily had taken this very quietly, as though it had not belonged at all to herself; but Bell had seen something of the truth, and, believing in Crosbie as an earnest, honest man, had spoken kind words of him, fostering any little aptitude for love which might already have formed itself in Lily’s bosom.

“But he is such an Apollo, you know,” Lily had said.

“He is a gentleman; I can see that.”

“Oh, yes; a man can’t be an Apollo unless he’s a gentleman.”

“And he’s very clever.”

“I suppose he is clever.”  There was nothing more said about his being a mere clerk.  Indeed, Lily had changed her mind on that subject.  Johnny Eames was a mere clerk; whereas Crosbie, if he was to be called a clerk at all, was a clerk of some very special denomination.  There may be a great difference between one clerk and another!  A Clerk of the Council and a parish clerk are very different persons.  Lily had got some such idea as this into her head as she attempted in her own mind to rescue Mr Crosbie from the lower orders of the Government service.