"I have lost it," said he evasively; for the piano had been Mary's, and he could not yet have a stranger's fingers running over the keys where hers had brought forth the familiar notes.
So the ladies swept forth into the little garden, where they found a rustic chair under the shadow of a golden laburnham tree, and where the roses that Mary's hands had tended were now in all the beauty and luxuriance of midsummer; and ere long, Patty Fripp, who was not above eaves-dropping, while collecting fresh salad for supper, and unobserved was close by listening to all the two visitors said, obtained a clue to the whole matter.
In fact, Greville Hampton, the widower, was engaged to Miss Anne Rookleigh!
"Yes," said the latter, leisurely fanning herself, "that child of his will be a great bore!"
"A greater bore if you have any little ones of your own," said the aunt, laughing; "but don't begin with this spirit in your breast, Anne—take care."
"Take care of what?" asked the niece, haughtily.
"I mean of abusing the great power you so evidently possess over your intended."
"I little thought, aunt, when I was only amusing myself with him at Ilfracombe, rambling among the Tors, sketching the Lover's Leap, talking, playing chess with him, singing to him, accepting his flowers and all that, I would come to love him as I do, and end at last by finding this engagement ring on my finger!"
("So-so!" muttered Patty, under her breath, with a vicious sniff; "my old gossip was right—men don't break their hearts and die of love—for their wives at all events, look you!")
"Yes, I love him for himself alone," resumed Miss Rookleigh, after a pause, "not his fortune certainly," she added with a mocking laugh; "he is so handsome and winning. But I know, aunt, that though you are a widow, you deem it impossible that there can be any romance in a second marriage; and yet in such, a man may learn that his first was a mistake, and that now he only loves for the first time," and with a dreamy smile in her bright hazel eyes she swayed her fan to and fro.