"And what of my dear friend, Mr. Potts?" asks Molly.
"Oh, Potts! I left him behind me in Dublin. He is uncommonly well, and has been all the winter pottering—by the bye, that is an appropriate word, isn't it?—reminds one of one of his own jokes—after a girl who rather fancies him, in spite of his crimson locks, or perhaps because of them. That particular shade is, happily, rare. She has a little money, too,—at least enough to make her an heiress in Ireland."
"Poor Ireland!" says Molly. "Some day perhaps I shall go there, and judge of its eccentricities myself."
"By the bye, Molly," says Luttrell, with an impromptu air, "did you ever see the Tower?"
"Never, I am ashamed to say."
"I share your sentiments. Never have I planted my foot upon so much as the lowest step of its interminable stairs. I feel keenly the disgrace of such an acknowledgment. Shall we let another hour pass without retrieving our false position? A thousand times 'no.' Go and put your bonnet on, Molly, and we will make a day of it."
And they do make a day of it, and are as foolishly, thoughtlessly, unutterably happy as youth and love combined can be in the very face of life's disappointments.
The first flush of her joy on meeting Luttrell being over, Molly grows once more depressed and melancholy.
Misfortune has so far subdued her that now she looks upon her future, not with the glad and hopeful eyes of old, but through a tearful mist, while dwelling with a sad uncertainty upon its probable results.