But when one has sixty guests in one's house, one has to wait for an
opportunity to escape from them unremarked. And the opportunity, in
fact, did not come for many days; not till the party broke up, save one
or two dowager she-cousins who "gave no trouble," and one or two bachelor
he-cousins whom my lord retained to consummate the slaughter of
pheasants, and play at billiards in the dreary intervals between sunset
and dinner, dinner and bedtime.

Then one cheerful frosty noon George Morley and his fair cousin walked
boldly /en evidence/, before the prying ghostly windows, across the broad
gravel walks; gained the secluded shrubbery, the solitary deeps of park-
land; skirted the wide sheet of water, and, passing through a private
wicket in the paling, suddenly came upon the patch of osier-ground and
humble garden, which were backed by the basketmaker's cottage.

As they entered those lowly precincts a child's laugh was borne to their
ears,--a child's silvery, musical, mirthful laugh; it was long since the
great lady had heard a laugh like that,--a happy child's natural laugh.
She paused and listened with a strange pleasure. "Yes," whispered George
Morley, "stop--and hush! there they are."

Waife was seated on the stump of a tree, materials for his handicraft
lying beside neglected. Sophy was standing before him,--he raising his
finger as if in reproof, and striving hard to frown. As the intruders
listened, they overheard that he was striving to teach her the rudiments
of French dialogue, and she was laughing merrily at her own blunders, and
at the solemn affectation of the shocked schoolmaster. Lady Montfort
noted with no unnatural surprise the purity of idiom and of accent with
which this singular basketmaker was unconsciously displaying his perfect
knowledge of a language which the best-educated English gentleman of that