"Except the old maids."
"I had forgotten them, but they have probably had lovers in their time; and after all, the courting must be so much pleasanter than the hard and fast wedlock!"
"I think your experience of married people cannot have been very fortunate," says Paul, looking amused. "Why should not people love each other after they are married as well as before?".
"They ought, but very often they do not! They begin very hot and end very cold; and I was wondering only yesterday whether, if one married somebody one did not care about, one would gradually get warmer towards him?”
"It would be rather a dangerous experiment," says Paul; "were you thinking of trying it?"
I do not answer, and as at this moment we fall in with Fane and Milly, he has no opportunity of repeating his question.
CHAPTER VIII.
Isabella. Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves,
Which are as easy broke as they make forms."
It is high noon, and we are "six precious souls, and all agog," dashing along the dusty, hot, turnpike-road towards Beecham Wood. The sun, knowing that his time is short, and that he will ere long sink from the proud overbearing tyrant into a mild, benevolent, dull old luminary, is beating down upon us with broad, level strokes, cleaving our parasols and tickling our faces, making us, in short, very uncomfortable, cross, and miserable. It is the sort of day when one longs instinctively for an open unoccupied space, no living being near to touch one, and nothing to do save imbibe cooling drinks, therefore pity me, oh reader! in that I am shut up with three other females in Milly's landau. Behind us follows a
