"Do you know it makes me very sorry to become your solicitor?"
"Why?"
"Because henceforth ours are mere business relations, and I, a struggling junior partner, must be circumspect too, and stand in proper awe and distant respect for a prospective heiress."
"Do not allow your reverence to carry you too far to an opposite extreme. You have been very good during most of our walk, and I have enjoyed it very much."
As she tripped in at the French window, Coristine could not reply. It is probable that he ejaculated inwardly, "the darlin'!" but, outwardly, he took out his pipe and sought consolation in the bowl of the Turk's head. While patrolling the long path down towards the meadow, he heard a low whistle, and, proceeding to the point in the fence whence it came, found Mr. Rawdon, as pale as he well could be, and much agitated. "Look 'ere, Mr. Currystone," he said, "I've bin down to Talfourds and a good bit further, and I find a fellow called Nash 'as bin about, plottin' to 'urt my business along of that brute of a Chisholm. They can't 'urt it much, but I can 'urt them, and, wot's more, I will. 'Ow I found out wot they're about is my haffair. I hain't got no time to lose, so you tell the genniwin Simon Pure Miss Do Please-us as I'll hoffer 'er a thousan' dollars cash for that there farm of 'ers till to-morrow mornin'. 'Er hacceptance must be hat the Post-hoffice hup the road hany time before ten o'clock, and the deed can be drawn hup between you and me and the Squire just has soon therehafter as she pleases. Ha, ha! pretty good, eh? Miss Do Please-us, she pleases! Bye, bye! Mr. Currystone, don't you forget, for it's business."
The Grinstun man stole along the meadow fence and travelled over the fields, back way, towards the Lake Settlement. Emptying his pipe, the lawyer found Miss Du Plessis and at once announced Mr. Rawdon's proposal, which he urged her not to accept. She said the land was certainly not worth any more, if it were worth that amount, and that a thousand dollars would be of much immediate use to her mother. But Coristine reminded her that Colonel Morton was, in all probability, with her mother now, and begged her at least to wait until their joint opinion could be procured. To this she agreed, and further conversation was checked by the arrival of Marjorie, the five young Carruthers and Mr. Michael Terry.
The whole party sallied out of the windows on to the verandah, the lawn, and thence out of the front gate, where they found the dominie in a state of radiant abstraction, strutting up and down the road, and quoting pages of his favourite poet. He had just completed the lines:—
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light.
The lawyer went up to him before he came near and hissed at his friend, "What about our compact?" to which the dominie, with a fierce cheerfulness, replied, "It is broken, sir; shivered to atoms; buried in oblivion. When a so-called honourable man takes a young lady walking in garden and meadow alone, and breathes soft trifles in her ear, the letter, the spirit, the whole periphery of the compact is gone. Your conduct, sir, leaves me free to act as I please towards the world's chief soul and radiancy. I shall do as I please, sir; I shall read Louisa and Ruth and Laodamia and the Female Vagrant, none daring to make me afraid. A single tress of ebon hair, a single beam of a dove-like eye, shall be enough to fortify my heart against all your legal lore, your scorn, your innuendos, your coward threats."