Mallienne, of any of the young men she knew, in their best Sunday broadcloth.
And this was before she had formulated, even to herself, her feelings for him; long before that ecstatic, that magical moment, when he had taken her into his arms, had kissed her, had kissed her mouth, had said, "Well, little one, do you know I am very fond of you, and I fancy you don't altogether dislike me, eh?"
That had happened on a Sunday afternoon, April 28th; a date she could never forget. They were out upon the côte; Freddy was nominally with them, but kept wandering away to gather the wild hyacinths which just then carpeted the ground with blue. He kept bringing her bunches of them to take care of; she could feel again the thick, pale-green, shiny stems grasped in her hand. And they were climbing the steep path which winds up from the bay to the brow of the cliff, and her dress brushed against the encroaching gorse and bracken, and her eyes followed a couple of white butterflies gyrating on ahead; or, looking down from the height on which she stood, she saw the smooth sea below her, paving, as with a green translucent marble, every inlet, every crevice of the bay.
Then the path had bent outwards to skirt a great boulder of granite, and there, right under the shelter of the rock, was a circular clearing, a resting-place, spread with the sweet, short cliff-grass, where a broad ledge of the stone offered a natural seat.
It was here that he had kissed her, and the flowers had fallen in a blue confusion at her feet, and, "Oh, I love you so," she had whispered, and he had laughed, and said, "Yes, child, I could see that from the very first."
Then they had sat down, he with his arm round her waist. "Well, I must call you Agnes now, I suppose," he had said; andshe
