"Are you going no farther?" asks Rodney, hoping sincerely she will say "No." She does say it.
"It is so nice here," she says, with a soft sigh, and a dreamy smile, whereupon he too climbs and seats himself beside her. As they are now situated, there is about half a yard between them of passable wall crowned with green sods, across which they can hold sweet converse with the utmost affability. The evening is fine; the heavens promise to be fair; the earth beneath is calm and full of silence as becomes a Sabbath eve; yet, alas! Mona strikes a chord that presently flings harmony to the winds.
"Tell me about your mother," she says, folding her hands easily in her lap. "I mean,—what is she like? Is she cold, or proud, or stand-off?" There is keen anxiety in her tone.
"Eh?" says Geoffrey, rather taken back. "Cold" and "proud" he cannot deny, even to himself, are words that suit his mother rather more than otherwise.
"I mean," says Mona, flushing a vivid scarlet, "is she stern?"
"Oh, no," says Geoffrey, hastily, recovering himself just in time; "she's all right, you know, my mother; and you'll like her awfully when—when you know her, and when—when she knows you."
"Will that take her long?" asks Mona, somewhat wistfully, feeling, without understanding, some want in his voice.
"I don't see how it could take any one long," says Rodney.
"Ah! that is because you are a man, and because you love me," says this astute reader of humanity. "But women are so different. Suppose—suppose she never gets to like me?"
"Well, even that awful misfortune might be survived. We can live in our own home 'at ease,' as the old song says, until she comes to her senses. By and by, do you know you have never asked me about your future home,—my own place, Leighton Hall? and yet it is rather well worth asking about, because, though small, it is one of the oldest and prettiest places in the county."