There was no occasion to be more specific in one's mention of him. There could but be one young man in their thoughts to-day.
"I don't know that I had formed any expectations about him."
"Oh, Allan, that can't be true! You must have thought about him, after everybody telling you of the likeness. Remember what you told me in our very first dance—how dreadfully bored you had been about him, and how glad you were that I didn't know him."
"My being bored—and I was horribly—was no reason why my imagination should dwell upon him. If I thought of him at all, I thought of him just as he is—the image of his portrait by Millais—and a very good-looking and well set-up young man—so much better looking than my humble self, that I wonder at any one's seeing a likeness between the two faces."
"Is he better looking, Allan? I know I like your face best."
"I'm glad of that, since you will have to put up with my face for a lifelong companion."
"Allan, how grumpily you said that."
"Did I, Suzie? I'm afraid I'm a brute. I am beginning to find out disagreeable depths in my character."
She looked at him with a puzzled air—so sweetly innocent, so free from any backward-reaching thought—that made him happy again. He took up the little hand hanging loose at her side and kissed it.
"Let us drop in upon Aunt Mornington, and ask her for lunch," he said as they came within sight of the Grove. "I don't feel like parting with you just yet, Suzie."