love. 'Pray let me go. Miss Pew will be angry if I am not at tea.'

'To think that such a creature as you should be under the control of any
such harpy,' exclaimed Brian. 'Well, if I must go, at least tell me I am
forgiven, and that I may exist upon the hope of seeing you again. I
suppose if I were to come to the hall-door, and send in my card, I should
not be allowed to see you?'

'Certainly not. Not if you were my own cousin instead of Bessie's.
Good-bye.'

'Then I shall happen to be going by in my boat every afternoon for the
next month or so. There is a dear good soul at the lock who lets
lodgings. I shall take up my abode there.'

'Please never land on this pathway again,' said Ida earnestly 'Miss Pew
would be horribly angry if she heard I had spoken to you. And now I must
go.'

She withdrew her hand from his grasp, and ran off across the meadow,
light-footed as Atalanta. Her heart was beating wildly, beating
furiously, when she flew up to her room to take off her hat and jacket
and smooth her disordered hair. Never before had any man, except
middle-aged Dr. Rylance, talked to her of love: and that this man of all
others, this man, sole master of the old mansion she so intensely
admired, her friend's kinsman, owner of a good old Saxon name; this man,
who could lift her in a moment from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to
place and station; that this man should look at her with admiring eyes,
and breathe impassioned words into her ear, was enough to set her heart
beating tumultuously, to bring hot blushes to her cheeks. It was too wild