“All true, perfectly true,” he thought to himself; “he loves her and she loves him, and I believe if she had never met with Valentine, she would still never have married me.  What a fool I am!”

“Why wouldn’t you take this view of things yesterday, when I tried to make you?” asked Valentine.

“I was not ready for it,” answered Giles, “or it was not ready for me.”

Thereupon they passed through a wicket-gate into a kind of glen or wilderness, at the end of John Mortimer’s garden, and beyond the stream where his little girls acted Nausicaa and his little boys had preserves of minute fishes, ingeniously fenced in with sticks and fine netting.

“There’s Grand,” exclaimed Valentine, “they’ve brought him out to look at their water-snails.  What a venerable old boy he is! he looks quite holy, doesn’t he?”

“Hold your tongue,” said Brandon, “they’ll hear you.  He’s come to see their newts; they had a lot yesterday at the bottom of the punt.  Little Hugh had one in his hand, a beast with an orange breast, and it was squinting up at him.”

It would be hard to say of any man that he is never right.  If he is always thinking that he has forgotten a certain lady, surely he is right sometimes.

They went in to dinner, a party of four, for John Mortimer since his wife’s death did not entertain ladies, and Miss Christie Grant always presided at an early dinner, when the governess and the children dined.

As the dinner advanced St. George and Valentine both got into high spirits, the former because a stronger conviction than usual assured him that he was forgetting Dorothea Graham; the latter, because instead of being pulled back, he had at last got a shove in the other direction.  In short, Valentine was so happy in his jokes and so full of fun, that the servants had no sooner withdrawn than John Mortimer taxed him with having good reason for being so, mentioned the probable cause, and asked to see Miss Graham’s portrait, “which, no doubt,” he said, “you have got in your pocket.”

“Why I have had that for years,” said Valentine scornfully.

“And dozens of them,” said Brandon; “they took them themselves.”

“When is it to be?” asked old Grand with great interest.

“I don’t exactly know, uncle; even Giles doesn’t know that!  If he had known, I’m sure he would have told you, and asked your advice, for I always brought him up to be very respectful to his elders.”

“Come, sir, come,” said the old man laughing, “if you don’t exactly know, I suppose you have a tolerably distinct notion.”

“I know when I should like it to be, and when I think D. would like it.  Not too late for a wedding tour, say October, now, or,” seeing his brother look grave, “or November; suppose we say November.”

“I’m afraid there is no wedding tour in the programme,” observed Brandon.  “The voyage must be the tour.”