"Thank you for your good opinion!"
"You are welcome; it's an honest opinion so far as it goes. And now we had better go in; you will want something to eat, and you are tired, I dare say."
"Yes, I am tired of a good many things," he replies, with a short laugh.
They walk together back to the house, between the beds of early wall-flowers and the Lent lilies nodding in the sunshine.
"I suppose I ought to congratulate you, Honor."
"Congratulate me," the girl repeats, looking at him with some surprise; then a sudden thought comes to her, and she smiles; but he does not see the smile.
"Yes—on your engagement to this fellow from Dublin. He is very rich, I hear."
"Immensely rich," the girl agrees calmly. "And then he is clever too; he writes—I'm sure I don't know what he writes; but he is literary."
"I'm glad you think so highly of him, and I hope you will be happy," he says after a pause.
"Thanks. I could do with a little happiness for a change, you know!
I've not had too much of it in my life, have I?"