"I don't intend to be either engaged or married," I said; "and to make a stir in society is about the very last thing I should wish."
"I wonder what you would wish?" he asked, looking at me attentively.
I looked back at him. Then I said, in a low, quiet voice:
"I can't quite understand why it is, but I find it very easy to tell you things. Perhaps it is because you are in my gallery and I am in yours."
"Yes, of course, that is the reason," he replied, with one of his quick, beautiful smiles.
"I will tell you what I really want."
"Do, Miss Heather—I really can't call you Miss Dalrymple, so it must be Miss Heather."
"I don't mind," I answered.
"Well, now then, out with your greatest wish!"
"I should like," I said, speaking deliberately, "to leave London, and to go into the heart of the country, to find there a pretty cottage, with woodbine and monthly roses climbing about the walls, and dear little low-ceiled rooms, and little lattice windows, and no sign of any other house anywhere near at all. And I should like beyond words to take father and live with him, all by our two selves, in that cottage. I should not want fine dresses there, and society would matter less than nothing to me."