Mr. Hale, as the hospitable luxury of a
freshly-decanted bottle of wine was placed on
the table.

Mrs. Hale was hurried. It seemed as if
desserts were impromptu and unusual things
at the parsonage; whereas, if Mr. Hale
would only have looked behind him, he would
have seen biscuits, and marmalade, and what
not, all arranged in formal order on the
sideboard. But the idea of pears had taken
possession of Mr. Hale's mind, and was not to
be got rid of.

"There are a few brown beurrés against
the south wall which are worth all foreign
fruits and preserves. Run, Margaret, and
gather us some."

"I propose that we adjourn into the garden,
and eat them there," said Mr. Lennox.
"Nothing is so delicious as to set one's teeth
into the crisp, juicy fruit, warm and scented
by the sun. The worst is, the wasps are
impudent enough to dispute it with one, even at
the very crisis and summit of enjoyment."

He rose, as if to follow Margaret, who had
disappeared through the window: he only
awaited Mrs. Hale's permission. She would
rather have wound up the dinner in the proper
way, and with all the ceremonies which
had gone on so smoothly hitherto, especially
as she and Dixon had got out the finger-
glasses from the store-room on purpose to be
as correct as became General Shaw's widow's
sister; but as Mr. Hale got up directly, and
prepared to accompany his guest, she could
only submit.

"I shall arm myself with a knife," said
Mr. Hale: "The days of eating fruit so
primitively as you describe are over with me. I
must pare it and quarter it before I can
enjoy it."

Margaret made a plate for the pears out of
a beet-root leaf, which threw up their brown
gold colour admirably. Mr. Lennox looked
more at her than at the pears; but her
father, inclined to cull fastidiously the very
zest and perfection of the hour he had stolen
from his anxiety, chose daintily the ripest
fruit, and sat down on the garden bench to
enjoy it at his leisure. Margaret and Mr.
Lennox strolled along the little terrace-walk
under the south wall, where the bees still
hummed and worked busily in their hives.

"What a perfect life you seem to live here!
I have always felt rather contemptuously
towards the poets before, with their wishes,
'Mine be a cot beside a hill,' and that sort of
thing: but now I am afraid that the truth is,
I have been nothing better than a Cockney.
Just now I feel as if twenty years' hard study
of law would be amply rewarded by one
year of such an exquisite serene life as this—
such skies!" looking up—"such crimson and
amber foliage, so perfectly motionless as
that!" pointing to some of the great forest
trees which shut in the garden as if it were
a nest.

"You must please to remember that our
skies are not always as deep a blue as they are
now. We have rain, and our leaves do fall,
and get sodden; though I think Helstone is
about as perfect a place as any in the world.
Recollect how you rather scorned my description
of it one evening in Harley Street: 'a
village in a tale.'"

"Scorned, Margaret! That is rather a
hard word."

"Perhaps it is. Only I know I should
have liked to have talked to you of what I
was very full at the time, and you—what must
I call it then?—spoke disrespectfully of
Helstone as a mere village in a tale."

"I will never do so again," said he, warmly.
They turned the corner of the walk.

"I could almost wish, Margaret—" he
stopped and hesitated. It was so unusual for
the fluent lawyer to hesitate that Margaret
looked up at him in a little state of
questioning wonder; but in an instant—from
what about him she could not tell—she
wished herself back with her mother—her
father—anywhere away from him, for she was
sure he was going to say something to which
she should not know what to reply. In
another moment the strong pride that was in
her came to conquer her sudden agitation,
which she hoped he had not perceived. Of
course she could answer, and answer the
right thing; and it was poor and despicable
of her to shrink from hearing any speech,
as if she had not power to put an end to it
with her high maidenly dignity.

"Margaret," said he, taking her by
surprise, and getting sudden possession of her
hand, so that she was forced to stand still and
listen, despising herself for the fluttering at
her heart all the time; "Margaret, I wish
you did not like Helstone so much—did not
seem so perfectly calm and happy here. I
have been hoping for these three months past
to find you regretting London—and London
friends, a little—enough to make you listen
more kindly" (for she was quietly but firmly
striving to extricate her hand from his
grasp) "to one who has not much to offer, it
is true—nothing but prospects in the future
—but who does love you, Margaret, almost
in spite of himself. Margaret, have I
startled you too much? Speak!" For he
saw her lips quivering almost as if she were
going to cry. She made a strong effort to be
calm; she would not speak till she had
succeeded in mastering her voice, and then she
said:

"I was startled. I did not know that you
cared for me in that way. I have always
thought of you as a friend; and, please, I
would rather go on thinking of you so. I
don't like to be spoken to as you have been
doing. I cannot answer you as you want me
to do, and yet I should feel so sorry if I
vexed you."

"Margaret," said he, looking into her eyes,
which met his with their open, straight look,
expressive of the utmost good faith and