CHAPTER VII.
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.
Mr. Hope left his powerful opera-glass with Mary Bartley. One day that Walter called she was looking through it at the landscape, and handed it to him. He admired its power. Mary told him it had saved her life once.
"Oh," said he, "how could that be?"
Then she told him how Hope had seen her drowning, a mile off, with it, and ridden a bare-backed steed to her rescue.
"God bless him!" cried Walter. "He is our best friend. Might I borrow this famous glass?"
"Oh," said Mary, "I am not going into any more streams; I am not so brave now as I used to be."
"Please lend it me, for all that."
"Of course I will, if you wish it."
Strange to say, after this, whether Mary walked out or rode out, she very often met Mr. Walter Clifford. He was always delighted and surprised. She was surprised three times, and said so, and after that she came to lower her lashes and blush, but not to start. Each meeting was a pure accident, no doubt, only she foresaw the inevitable occurrence.