Within a week of Tom Bristow\'s first visit to Pincote, and his introduction to the Copes, father and son, Mr. Cope, junior, found himself, much to his disgust, fairly on his way to New York. He would gladly have rebelled against the parental dictum in this matter, if he had dared to do so; but he knew of old how worse than useless it would be for him to offer the slightest opposition to his father\'s wishes.

"You will go and say goodbye to Miss Culpepper as a matter of course," said Mr. Cope to him. "But don\'t grow too sentimental over the parting. Do it in an easy, smiling way, as if you were merely going out of town for a few days. Don\'t make any promises--don\'t talk about the future--and, above all, don\'t say a word about marriage. Of course, you will have to write to her occasionally while you are away. Just a few lines, you know, to say how you are, and all that. No mawkish silly love-nonsense, but a sensible, manly letter; and be wisely reticent as to the date of your return. Very sorry, but you don\'t know how much longer your business may detain you--you know the sort of thing I mean."

When the idea had first entered Mr. Cope\'s mind that it would be an excellent thing if he could only succeed in getting his son engaged to Squire Culpepper\'s only child, it had not been without an ulterior eye to the fortune which that young lady would one day call her own that he had been induced to press forward the scheme to a successful issue. By marrying Miss Culpepper, his son would be enabled to take up a position in county society such as he could never hope to attain either by his own merits, which were of the most moderate kind, or from his father\'s money bags alone. But dearly as Mr. Cope loved position, he loved money still better; and it was no part of his programme that his son should marry a pauper, even though that pauper could trace back her pedigree to the Conqueror. And yet, if the squire went on speculating as madly as he was evidently doing now, it seemed only too probable that pauperism, or something very much like it, would be the result, as far as Miss Culpepper was concerned. Instead of having a fortune of at least twenty thousand pounds, as she ought to have, would she come in for as many pence when the old man died? Mr. Cope groaned in spirit as he asked himself the question, and he became more determined than ever to carry out his policy of waiting and watching, before allowing the engagement of the young people to reach a point that would render a subsequent rupture impossible without open scandal--and scandal was a bugbear of which the banker stood in extreme dread.

Fortunately, perhaps, for Mr. Cope\'s view, the feelings of neither of the people chiefly concerned were very deeply interested. Edward had obeyed his father in this as in everything else. He had known Jane from a child, and he liked her because she was clever and good-tempered. But she by no means realized his ideal of feminine beauty. She was too slender, too slightly formed to meet with his approval. "There\'s not enough of her," was the way he put it to himself. Miss Moggs, the confectioner\'s daughter, with her ample proportions and beaming smile, was far more to his taste. Equally to his taste was the pastry dispensed by Miss Moggs\'s plump fingers, of which he used to devour enormous quantities, seated on a three-legged stool in front of the counter, while chatting in a free and easy way about his horses and dogs, and the number of pigeons he had slaughtered of late. And then it was so much easier to talk to Miss Moggs than it was to talk to Jane. Miss Moggs looked up to him as to a young magnifico, and listened to his oracular utterances with becoming reverence and attention; but Jane, somehow, didn\'t seem to appreciate him as he wished to be appreciated, and he never felt, quite sure that she was not laughing at him in her sleeve.

"So you are going to leave us by the eight o\'clock train to-morrow, are you?" asked Jane, when he went to Pincote to say a few last words of farewell. He had sat down by her side on the sofa, and had taken her unresisting hand in his; a somewhat thin, cold little hand, that returned his pressure very faintly. How different, as he could not help saying to himself, from the warm, plump fingers of Matilda Moggs.

"Yes, I\'m going by the morning train. Perhaps I shall never come back. Perhaps I shall be drowned," he said, somewhat dolorously.

"Not you, Edward, dear. You will live to plague us all for many a year to come. I wish I could do your business, and go instead of you."

"You don\'t mean to say that you would like to cross the Atlantic, Jane?"

"I mean to say that there are few things in the world would please me better. What a fresh and glorious experience it must be to one who has never been far from home!"

"But think of the sea-sickness."

"Think of being out of sight of commonplace land for days and days together. Think how delightful it must be to be rocked on the great Atlantic rollers, and what a new and pleasant sensation it must be to know that there is only a plank between yourself and the fishes, and yet not to feel the least bit afraid."

Edward shuddered. "When you wake up in the middle of the night, and hear the wind blowing hard, you will think of me, won\'t you?" he said.

"Of course I shall. And I shall wish I were by your side to enjoy it. To be out in a gale on the Atlantic--that must indeed be glorious!"

Edward\'s fat cheeks became a shade paler, "Don\'t talk in that way, Jane," he said. "One never can tell what may happen. I shall write to you, of course, and all that; and you won\'t forget me while I\'m away, will you?"

"No, I shall not forget you, Edward; of that you may be quite sure."

Then he drew her towards him, and kissed her; and then, after a few more words, he went away.

It was just the sort of parting that his father would have approved of, he said to himself, as he drove down the avenue. No tears, no sentimental nonsense, no fuss of any kind. Privately he felt somewhat aggrieved that she had not taken the parting more to heart. "There wasn\'t even a single tear in her eye," he said to himself. "She doesn\'t half know how to appreciate a fellow."

He would perhaps have altered his opinion in some measure could he have seen Jane half an hour later. She had locked herself in her bedroom, and was crying bitterly. Why she was crying thus she would have found it difficult to explain: in fact, she hardly knew herself. It is possible that her tears were not altogether tears of bitterness--that some other feeling than sorrow for her temporary separation from Edward Cope was stirring the fountains of her heart. She kept on upbraiding herself for her coldness and want of feeling, and trying to persuade herself that she was deeply sorry, rather than secretly--very secretly--glad to be relieved of the tedium of his presence for several weeks to come. She knew how wrong it was of her--it was almost wicked, she thought--to feel thus: but, underlying all her tears, was a gleam of precious sunshine, of which she was dimly conscious, although she would not acknowledge its presence even to herself.

After a time her tears ceased to flow. She got up and bathed her eyes. While thus occupied her maid knocked at the door.

Mr. Bristow was downstairs. He had brought some photographs for Miss Culpepper to look at.

"Tell Mr. Bristow how sorry I am that I cannot see him to-day," said Jane. "But my head aches so badly that I cannot possibly go down." Then when the girl was gone, "I won\'t see him to-day," she added to herself. "When Edward and I are married he will come and see us sometimes, perhaps. Edward will always be glad to see him."

Hearing the front-door clash, she ran to the window and pulled aside a corner of the blind. In a minute or two she saw Tom walking leisurely down the avenue. Presently he paused, and turned, and began to scan the house as if he knew that Jane were watching him. It was quite impossible that he should see her, but for all that she shrank back, with a blush and a shy little smile. But she did not loose her hold of the blind; and presently she peeped again, and never moved her eyes till Tom was lost to view.

Then she went downstairs into the drawing-room, and found there the photographs which Tom had left for her inspection. There, too, lying close by, was a glove which he had dropped and had omitted to pick up again. "I will give it to him next time he comes," she said softly to herself. Strange to relate, her next action was to press the glove to her lips, after which she hid it away in the bosom of her dress. But young ladies\' memories are proverbially treacherous, and Jane\'s was no exception to the rule. Tom Bristow\'s glove never found its way back into his possession.

Jane Culpepper had drifted into her engagement with Edward Cope almost without knowing how such a state of affairs had been brought about. When her father first mentioned the matter to her, and told her that Edward was fond of her, she laughed at the idea of Edward being fond of anything but his horses and his gun. When, later on, the young banker, in obedience to parental instructions, blundered through a sort of declaration of love, she laughed again, but neither repulsed nor encouraged him. She was quite heart-whole and fancy-free; but certainly Mr. Cope, junior, bore only the faintest resemblance to the vague hero of her girlish dreams--who would come riding one day out of the enchanted Kingdom of Love, and, falling on his knees before her, implore her to share his heart and fortune for evermore. To speak the truth, there was no romance of any kind about Edward. He was hopelessly prosaic: he was irredeemably commonplace; but they had known each other from childhood, and she had a kindly regard for him, arising from that very fact. So, pending the arrival of Prince Charming, she did not altogether repulse him, but went on treating his suit as a piece of pleasant absurdity which could never work itself out to a serious issue either for herself or him. She took the alarm a little when some whispers reached her that she would be asked, before long, to fix a day for the wedding; but, latterly, even those whispers had died away. Nobody seemed in a hurry to press the affair forward to its legitimate conclusion: even Edward himself showed no impatience on the point. So long as he could come and go at Pincote as he liked, and hover about Jane, and squeeze her hand occasionally, and drive her out once or twice a week behind his high-stepping bays, he seemed to want nothing more. They were just the same to each other as they had been when they were children, Jane said to herself--and why should they not remain so?

But, of late, a slight change had come o\'er the spirit of Miss Culpepper\'s dream. New hopes, and thoughts, and fears, to which she had hitherto been a stranger, began to nestle and flutter round her heart, like love-birds building in spring. The thought of becoming the wife of Edward Cope was fast becoming--nay, had already become, utterly distasteful to her. She began to realize the fact that it is impossible to keep on playing with fire without getting burnt. She had allowed herself to drift into an engagement with a man for whom she really cared nothing, thinking, probably, at the time that for her no Prince Charming would ever come riding out of the woods; and that, if it would please her father, she might as well marry Edward Cope as any one else. But behold! all at once Prince Charming had come, and although, as yet, he had not gone down on his knees and offered his hand and heart for evermore, she felt that she could never love but him alone. She felt, too, with a sort of dumb despair, that she had already given herself away beyond recall--or, at least, had led the world to think that she had so given herself away; and that she could not, with any show of maidenly ho............