we may meet again.'

And so she glided away from him, and he was left alone, sitting on the
spar. Now, at any rate, he had engaged himself. There could not be any
doubt about that. He certainly could not be justified in regarding
himself as free because she had told him that she would give him time to
think of it. Of course he was engaged to marry her. When a man has been
successful in his wooing he is supposed to be happy. He asked himself
whether he was proud of the result of this intimacy. She had told
him,--she herself,--that she had 'caught him', meaning thereby that he
had been taken as a rabbit with a snare or a fish with a baited hook. If
it had been so, surely she would not herself have said so. And yet he
was aware how common it is for a delinquent to cover his own delinquency
by declaring it. 'Of course I am idle,' says the idle one, escaping the
disgrace of his idleness by his honesty. 'I have caught you!' There is
something soothing to the vanity in such a declaration from a pretty
woman. That she should have wished to catch you is something;--something
that the net should itself be so pleasant, with its silken meshes! But
the declaration may not the less be true and the fact unpleasant. In the
matter of matrimony a man does not wish to be caught; and Caldigate,
fond as he was of her, acknowledged that what she said was true.

He leant back in a corner that was made by the hatchway, and endeavoured
to think over his life and prospects. If this were a true engagement,
then must he cease altogether to think of Hester Bolton. Then must that
dream be abandoned. It is of no use to the most fervid imagination to
have a castle projected in Spain from which all possible foundation has
been taken away. In his dreams of life a man should never dream that
which is altogether impossible. There had been something in the thought
of Hester Bolton which had taken him back from the roughnesses of his