through which the sunlight flickers lovingly on to his fair, bright locks. "If you do go, which I devoutly hope you will not, Nell, there will be plenty of time for another nice long talk, will there not?"
"Plenty!" I say, my heart sinking, for I know he will try and win an unconditional promise from me before I go, and that I never will give. "Good-bye, George!"
And so he goes away, through the light and shadow, a stalwart, knightly figure that many a proud woman might look after with glad eyes of love and pleasure.
"Oh, love, love!" I say to myself as I go on towards the house, "that some people eat their hearts out in trying to win, and others take as thanklessly as though it were dirt; why do you not go where you would be welcomed with eager, grateful hands, instead of beating at a fast-shut door that can never be opened to you, never, ah! never!"
CHAPTER III.
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee."
It is Saturday, the thirtieth of August, and I am speeding along through golden sun-flooded fields of wheat, and shorn brown-green meadows; not on my own two indifferently shod feet, but in a carriage drawn by a puffing, snorting, hissing, dirty monster, who makes a prodigious noise, and hurry, and fuss, as he goes on his iron way rejoicing. I am off! Actually off! I am still doubtful as to whether it is really my veritable body that is seated on the hard blue cushions of the railway carriage. I keep on rubbing my eyes to be quite sure that I am awake, that I shall not
