Part 3, Chapter XVII.
Smooth Waters.
”—The old June weather,
Blue above lane and wall.”
“You are quite sure of your own mind, Mysie?”
“Yes, Hugh. I am quite certain.”
“Because I ought to set before you that you might do much better for yourself. You have seen very few people, and I ought not to let you act upon impulse,” said Hugh, in the driest of voices.
Mysie had been prepared for this appeal; and, though she blushed crimson and kept her eyes on her lap, she replied, not by protestations, but by the arguments which she thought ought to prove convincing. Hugh had called her into the study, a little room looking out on the garden, and more or less appropriated to himself. There was another room which all the young men shared when at home, and where pipes, guns, dogs, and books were to be found in wild confusion; but this was Hugh’s sanctum, where he wrote letters and transacted business and possibly read the highly-respectable volumes that lined its wails. Mysie sat in a great leather chair by the window, with the flickering sun on her bright brown hair and the shadows of the roses on her gay green and white dress.
“I know,” she said modestly, but quite clearly, “that perhaps some one richer than Arthur might—might meet me by-and-by.”