“Well we can’t even be engaged yet,” said Ralph; “but we understand each other and that is something. Tomorrow you must see her.”

“I will devote myself to her entirely,” said Macneillie with a mirthful twinkle in his grey eyes. “And you in the meantime can be profitably improving your Irish accent with Mrs. Hereford with a view to Sir Lucius O’Trigger. Your brogue doesn’t quite satisfy me yet.”


CHAPTER XXI

“So, from her sky-like spirit, gentleness

Dropt ever like a sunlit fall of rain,

And his beneath drank in the bright caress

As thirstily as would a parched plain,

That long hath watched the showers of sloping grey