She did give him her hand, though not so freely, David thought, as she had done on his own little lawn three hours before, and this dashed his spirits.  It seemed to him a step lost, and he had hoped to gain a step somehow by walking home with her.  He felt like one who has undertaken to catch some skittish timorous thing, that, if you stand still, will come within a certain small but safe distance, but you must not move a step toward it, or, whir, away it is.  He went slowly home, his heart warm and cold by turns; warm when he remembered the sweet hours he had just spent, and her sweet looks and heavenly tones, every one of which he saw and heard again; cold when he thought of the social distance that separated them, and the hundred chances to one against his love.  Then he said to himself:  “Time was I thought I could never bring a yard down from the foretop to the deck, but I mastered that.  Time was I thought I could never work out a logarithm without a formula, but I mastered that.  Time was the fiddle beat me so I was ready to cry over it, but at last I learned to make it sing, and now I can make her smile with it (God bless her!) instead of stopping her ears.  I can hardly mind the thing that didn’t beat me dead for a long while, but I persevered and got the upper hand.  Ay, but this is higher and harder than them all—­a hundred times harder and higher.

“I’ll hold my course, let the wind blow high or low, and if I can’t overhaul the wish of my heart, well, I’ll carry her flag to the last.  I’ll die a bachelor for her sake, as sure as you are the moon, my lass, and you the polar star, and from this hour I’ll never look at you, but I’ll make believe it is her I am looking up at; for she is as high above me, and as bright as you are.  God bless her! and to think I never even said good-night to her!  I stood there like a mummy.”  And David reproached himself for his unkindness.

Lucy, on entering the drawing-room, was surprised to find it blazing with candles, but she was more surprised at what she saw seated calmly in an armchair—­Mrs. Bazalgette.  Lucy stood transfixed; the audacious intruder laughed at her astonishment; the next moment they intertwined, and fell to kissing one another with tender violence.

“Well, love, the fact is, I was passing here on my way home from Devonshire, and I wanted particularly to speak to you, so I thought I would venture just to pop in for a passing call, and lo!  I find the old ogre is absent, and not expected back for ever so long, so I have installed myself at his Font Abbey, partly out of love for you, dear, partly, I confess it, out of hate to him.  You will write and tell me his face when he comes home and hears I have been living and enjoying myself in his den.  I ordered my imperial into his bedroom.  I took it for granted that would be the only comfortable one in his house.”

“Aunt Bazalgette!” cried Lucy, turning pale; “oh, aunt, what will become of us?”