May, beautiful May, had brought the golden flowers, and the trees in the valley behind the sleepy old town of Calcombe Pomeroy were decking themselves in the first wan green of their early spring foliage. The ragged robins were hanging out, pinky red, from the hedgerows; the cuckoo was calling from the copse beside the mill stream; and the merry wee hedge-warblers were singing lustily from the topmost sprays of hawthorn, with their full throats bursting tremulously in the broad sunshine. And Ernest Le Breton, too, filled with the season, had come down from Dunbude for a fortnight’s holiday, on his premised visit to his friend Oswald, or, to say the truth more plainly, to Oswald’s pretty little sister Edie. For Ernest had fully made up his mind by this time what it was he had come for, and he took the earliest possible opportunity of taking a walk with Edie alone, through the tiny glen behind the town, where the wee stream tumbles lazily upon the big slow-turning vanes of the overshot mill-wheel.

‘Let us sit down a bit on the bank here, Miss Oswald,’ he said to his airy little companion, as they reached the old stone bridge that crosses the stream just below the mill-house; ‘it’s such a lovely day one feels loath to miss any of it, and the scenery here looks so bright and cheerful after the endless brown heather and russet bracken about Dunbude. Not that Exmoor isn’t beautiful in its way, too—all Devonshire is beautiful alike for that matter; but then it’s more sombre and woody in the north, and much less spring-like than this lovely quiet South Devon country.’

‘I’m so glad you like Calcombe,’ Edie said, with one of her unfailing blushes at the indirect flattery to herself implied in praise of her native county; ‘and you think it prettier than Dunbude, then, do you?’

‘Prettier in its own way, yes, though not so grand of course; everything here is on a smaller scale. Dunbude, you know, is almost mountainous.’

‘And the Castle?’ Edie asked, bringing round the conversation to her own quarter, ‘is that very fine? At all like Warwick, or our dear old Arlingford?’

‘Oh, it isn’t a castle at all, really,’ Ernest answered; ‘only a very big and ugly house. As architecture it’s atrocious, though it’s comfortable enough inside for a place of the sort.’

‘And the Exmoors, are they nice people? What kind of girl is Lady Hilda, now?’ Poor little Edie? she asked the question shyly, but with a certain deep beating in her heart, for she had often canvassed with herself the vague possibility that Ernest might actually fall in love with Lady Hilda. Had he fallen in love with her already, or had he not? She knew she would be able to guess the truth by his voice and manner the moment he answered her. No man can hide that secret from a woman who loves him. Yet it was not without a thrill and a flutter that she asked him, for she thought to herself, what must she seem to him after all the grand people he had been mixing with so lately at Dunbude? Was it possible he could see anything in her, a little country village girl, coming to her fresh from the great ladies of that unknown and vaguely terrible society?

‘Lady Hilda!’ Ernest answered, laughing—and as he said the words Edie knew in her heart that her question was answered, and blushed once more in her bewitching fashion. ‘Lady Hilda! Oh, she’s a very queer girl, indeed; she’s not at all clever, really, but she has the one virtue of girls of her class—their perfect frankness. She’s frank all over—no reserve or reticence at all about her. Whatever she thinks she says, without the slightest idea that you’ll see anything to laugh at or to find fault with in it. In matters of knowledge, she’s frankly ignorant. In matters of taste, she’s frankly barbaric. In matters of religion, she’s frankly heathen. And in matters of ethics, she’s frankly immoral—or rather extra-moral,’ he added, quickly correcting himself for the misleading expression.

‘I shouldn’t think from your description she can be a very nice person,’ Edie said, greatly relieved, and pulling a few tall grasses at her side by way of hiding her interest in the subject. ‘She can’t be a really nice girl if she’s extra-moral, as you call it.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean she’d cut one’s throat or pick one’s pocket, you know,’ Ernest went on quickly, with a gentle smile. ‘She’s got a due respect for the ordinary conventional moralities like other people, no doubt; but in her case they’re only social prejudices, not genuine ethical principles. I don’t suppose she ever seriously asked herself whether anything was right or wrong or not in her whole lifetime. In fact, I’m sure she never did; and if anybody else were to do so, she’d be immensely surprised and delighted at the startling originality and novelty of thought displayed in such a view of the question.’

‘But she’s very handsome, isn’t she?’ Edie asked, following up her inquiry with due diligence.

‘Handsome? oh, yes, in a bold sort of actress fashion. Very handsome, but not, to me at least, pleasing. I believe most men admire her a great deal; but she lacks a feminine touch dreadfully. She dashes away through everything as if she was hunting; and she DOES hunt too, which I think bad enough in anybody, and horrible in a woman.’

‘Then you haven’t fallen in love with her, Mr. Le Breton? I half imagined you would, you know, as I’m told she’s so very attractive.’

‘Fallen in love with HER, Miss Oswald! Fallen in love with Hilda Tregellis! What an absurd notion! Heaven forbid it!’

‘Why so, please?’

‘Why, in the first place, what would be the use of it? Fancy Lady Exmoor’s horror at the bare idea of her son’s tutor falling in love with Lady Hilda! I assure you, Miss Oswald, she would evaporate at the very mention of such an unheard-of enormity. A man must be, if not an earl, at least a baronet with five thousand a year, before he dare face the inexpressible indignation of Lady Exmoor with an offer of marriage for Lady Hilda.’

‘But people don’t always fall in love by tables of precedence,’ Edie put in simply. ‘It’s quite possible, I suppose, for a man who isn’t a duke himself to fall in love with a duke’s daughter, even though the duke her papa mayn’t personally happen to approve of the match. However, you don’t seem to think Lady Hilda herself a pleasant girl, even apart from the question of Lady Exmoor’s requirements?’

‘Miss Oswald,’ Ernest said, looking at her suddenly, as she sat half hiding her face with her parasol, and twitching more violently than ever at the tall grasses; ‘Miss Oswald, to tell you the truth, I haven’t been thinking much about Hilda Tregellis or any of the other girls I’ve met at Dunbude, and for a very sufficient reason, because I’ve had my mind too much preoccupied by somebody else elsewhere.’

Edie blushed even more prettily than before, and held her peace, half raising her eyes for a second in an enquiring glance at his, and then dropping them hastily as they met, in modest trepidation. At that moment Ernest had never seen anything so beautiful or so engaging as Edie Oswald.

‘Edie,’ he said, beginning again more boldly, and taking her little gloved hand almost unresistingly in his; ‘Edie, you know my secret. I love you. Can you love me?’

Edie looked up at him shyly, the tears glistening and trembling a little in the corner of her big bright eyes, and for a moment she answered nothing. Then she drew away her hand hastily and said with a sigh, ‘Mr. Le Breton, we oughtn’t to be talking so. We mustn’t. Don’t let us. Take me home, please, at once, and don’t say anything more about it.’ But her heart beat within her bosom with a violence that was not all unpleasing, and her looks half belied her words to Ernest’s keen glance even as she spoke them.

‘Why not, Edie?’ he said, drawing her down again gently by her little hand as she tried to rise hesitatingly. ‘Why not? tell me. I’ve looked into your face, and though I can hardly dare to hope it or believe it, I do believe I read in it that you really might love me.’

‘Oh, Mr. Le Breton,’ Edie answered, a tear now quivering visibly on either eyelash, ‘don’t ask me, please don’t ask me. I wish you wouldn’t. Take me home, won’t you?’

Ernest dropped her hand quietly, with a little show of despondency that was hardly quite genuine, for his eyes had already told him better. ‘Then you can’t love me, Miss Oswald,’ he said, looking at her closely. ‘I’m sorry for it, very sorry for it; but I’m grieved if I have seemed presumptuous in asking you.’

This time the two tears trickled slowly down Edie’s cheek—not very sad tears either—and she answered hurriedly, ‘Oh, I don’t mean that, Mr. Le Breton, I don’t mean that. You misunderstand me, I’m sure you misunderstand me.’

Ernest caught up the trembling little hand again. ‘Then you CAN love me, Edie?’ he said eagerly, ‘you can love me?’

Edie answered never a word, but bowed her head and cried a little, silently. Ernest took the dainty wee gloved hand between his own two hands and pressed it tenderly. He felt in return a faint pressure.

‘Then why won’t you let me love you, Edie?’ he asked, looking at the blushing girl once more.

‘Oh, Mr. Le Breton,’ Edie said, rising and moving away from the path a little under the shade of the big elm-tree, ‘it’s very wrong of me to let you talk so. I mustn’t think of marrying you, and you mustn’t think of marrying me. Consider the difference in our positions.’

‘Is that all?’ Ernest answered gaily. ‘Oh, Edie, if that’s all, it isn’t a very difficult matter to settle. My position’s exactly nothing, for I’ve got no money and no prospects; and if I ask you to marry me, it must be in the most strictly speculative fashion, with no date and no certainty. The only question is, will you consent to wait for me till I’m able to offer you a home to live in? It’s asking you a great deal, I know; and you’ve made me only too happy and too grateful already; but if you’ll wait for me till we can marry, I shall live all my life through to repay you for your sacrifice.’

‘But, Mr. Le Breton,’ Edie said, turning towards the path and drying her eyes quickly, ‘I really don’t think you ought to marry me. The difference in station is so great—even Harry would allow the difference in station. Your father was a great man, and a general and a knight, you know; and though my dear father is the best and kindest of men, he isn’t anything of that sort, of course.’

A slight shade of pain passed across Ernest’s face. ‘Edie,’ he said, ‘please don’t talk about that—please don’t. My father was a just and good man, whom I loved and honoured deeply; if there’s anything good in any of us boys, it comes to us from my dear father. But please don’t speak to me about his profession. It’s one of the griefs and troubles of my life. He was a soldier, and an Indian soldier too; and if there’s anything more certain to me than the principle that all fighting is very wrong and indefensible, it’s the principle that our rule in India is utterly unjust and wicked. So instead of being proud of my father’s profession, much as I respected him, I’m profoundly ashamed of it; and it has been a great question to me always how far I was justified at all in living upon the pension given me for his Indian services.’

Edie looked at him half surprised and half puzzled. It was to her such an odd and unexpected point of view. But she felt instinctively that Ernest really and deeply meant what he said, and she knew she must not allude to the subject again. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said simply, ‘if I’ve put it wrong; yet you know I can’t help feeling the great disparity in our two situations.’

‘Edie,’ said Ernest, looking at her again with all his eyes—‘I’m going to call you “Edie” always now, so that’s understood between us. Well, I shall tell you exactly how I feel about this matter. From the first moment I saw you I felt drawn towards you, I felt that I couldn’t help admiring you and sympathising with you and loving you. If I dared I would have spoken to you that day at Iffley; but I said to myself “She will not care for me; and besides, it would be wrong of me to ask her just yet.” I had nothing to live upon, and I oughtn’t to ask you to wait for me—you who are so pretty, and sweet and good, and clever—I ought to leave you free to your natural prospect of marrying some better man, who would make you happier than I can ever hope to do. So I tried to put the impulse aside; I waited, saying to myself that if you really cared for me a little bit, you would still care for me when I came to Calcombe Pomeroy. But then my natural selfishness overcame me—you can forgive me for it, Edie; how could I help it when I had once seen you? I began to be afraid some other man would be beforehand with you; and I liked you so much I couldn’t bear to think of the chance that you might be taken away from me before I asked you. All day long, as I’ve been walking alone on those high grey moors at Dunbude, I’ve been thinking of you; and at last I made up my mind that I MUST come and ask you to be my wife—some time—whenever we could afford to marry. I know I’m asking you to make a great sacrifice for me; it’s more than I have any right to ask you; I’m ashamed of myself for asking it; I can only make you a poor man’s wife, and how long I may have to wait even for that I can’t say; but if you’ll only consent to wait for me, Edie, I’ll do the best that lies in me to make you as happy and to love you as well as any man on earth could ever do.’

Edie turned her face towards his, and said softly, ‘Mr. Le Breton, I will wait for you as long as ever you wish; and I’m so happy, oh so happy.’

There was a pause for a few moments, and then, as they walked homeward down the green glen, Edie said, with something more of her usual archness, ‘So after all you haven’t fallen in love with Lady Hilda! Do you know, Mr. Le Breton, I rather fancied at Oxford you liked me just a little tiny bit; but when I heard you were going to Dunbude I said to myself, “Ah, now he’ll never care for a quiet country girl like me!” And when I knew you were coming down here to Calcombe, straight from all those grand ladies at Dunbude, I felt sure you’d be disenchanted as soon as you saw me, and ne............