"I wasn't aware there was anything the matter. An excess of happiness, probably; girls like to be married, you know, Grace."
"Fiddlestick! She has grown thin; she mopes in her room all day long, and hasn't a word for anyone—she who used to be the veriest chatterbox alive."
"All very naturally accounted for, my dear. M. La Touche is absent—doubtless she is pining for him."
"Just about as much as I am. I tell you, Frank, I hope things will go right next June, but I don't believe it. Hush! here is Miss Danton."
Miss Danton opened the door, and, seeing who were there, bowed coldly, and retired again. Unjustly enough, the brother came in for part of the aversion she felt for the sister.
Meantime Mr. Stanford sauntered along the village with his fishing-rod, nodding good-humouredly right and left. Short as had been his stay at Danton Hall, he was very well known in the village, and had won golden opinions from all sorts of people. From the black-eyed girls who fell in love with his handsome face, to the urchins rolling in the mud, and to whom he flung handfuls of pennies. The world and Mr. Stanford went remarkably well with each other, and whistling all the way, he reached his destination in half an hour—a clear, silvery stream, shadowed by waving trees and famous in fishing annals. He flung himself down on the turfy sward, lit a cigar, and began smoking and staring reflectively at vacancy.
The afternoon was lovely, warm as June, the sky was cloudless, and the sunlight glittered in golden ripples on the stream. All things were favourable; but Mr. Stanford was evidently not a very enthusiastic disciple of Isaac Walton; for his cigar was smoked out, the stump thrown away, and his fishing-rod lay unused still. He took it up at last and dropped it scientifically in the water.
"It's a bad business," he mused, "and hanging, drawing, and quartering would be too good for me. But what the dickens is a fellow to do? And then she is so fond of me, too—poor little girl!"
He laid the fishing-rod down again, drew from an inner pocket a note-book and pencil. From between the leaves he drew out a sheet of pink-tinted, gilt-edged note paper, and, using the note-book for a desk, began to write. It was a letter, evidently; and after he wrote the first line, he paused, and looked at it with an odd smile. The line was, "Angel of my Dreams."
"I think she will like the style of that," he mused; "it's Frenchified and sentimental, and she rather affects that sort of thing. Poor child! I don't see how I ever got to be so fond of her."