"No—o."
"I ought not to have come at this time of night. I ought to have waited till to-morrow, I know."
"It is rather late."
"But to-morrow seemed such a long time off, that I thought I must know the worst or the best before the sun came up again. I don't quite know which it is now; which is it, Esther?"
"It's neither the one nor the other; it's the second best," she answers, all smiles again at seeing some prospect of her admirer's departure, and forgetting, with youthful heedlessness, the price at which that departure has been bought. "It is that I really am very much obliged, though, all the same I wish you would think better of it, and that I'll try; I will, really; don't look as if you did not believe me."
So with this half-loaf he goes, passes away through the little wooden porch, that is so low it looks as if it were going to knock his tall head, past the stables, and through the oak woods, home.
[CHAPTER III.]
"It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word—"