The last of the ten days had now come, and Phineas was discontented and almost unhappy.  The more he saw of Lady Laura the more he feared that it was impossible that she should become his wife.  And yet from day to day his intimacy with her became more close.  He had never made love to her, nor could he discover that it was possible for him to do so.  She seemed to be a woman for whom all the ordinary stages of love-making were quite unsuitable, Of course he could declare his love and ask her to be his wife on any occasion on which he might find himself to be alone with her.  And on this morning he had made up his mind that he would do so before the day was over.  It might be possible that she would never speak to him again;—­that all the pleasures and ambitious hopes to which she had introduced him might be over as soon as that rash word should have been spoken!  But, nevertheless, he would speak it.

On this day there was to be a grouse-shooting party, and the shooters were to be out early.  It had been talked of for some day or two past, and Phineas knew that he could not escape it.  There had been some rivalry between him and Mr. Bonteen, and there was to be a sort of match as to which of the two would kill most birds before lunch.  But there had also been some half promise on Lady Laura’s part that she would walk with him up the Linter and come down upon the lake, taking an opposite direction from that by which they had returned with Mr. Kennedy.

“But you will be shooting all day,” she said, when he proposed it to her as they were starting for the moor.  The waggonet that was to take them was at the door, and she was there to see them start.  Her father was one of the shooting party, and Mr. Kennedy was another.

“I will undertake to be back in time, if you will not think it too hot.  I shall not see you again till we meet in town next year.”

“Then I certainly will go with you,—­that is to say, if you are here.  But you cannot return without the rest of the party, as you are going so far.”

“I’ll get back somehow,” said Phineas, who was resolved that a few miles more or less of mountain should not detain him from the prosecution of a task so vitally important to him.  “If we start at five that will be early enough.”

“Quite early enough,” said Lady Laura.

Phineas went off to the mountains, and shot his grouse, and won his match, and eat his luncheon.  Mr. Bonteen, however, was not beaten by much, and was in consequence somewhat ill-humoured.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Mr. Bonteen, “I’ll back myself for the rest of the day for a ten-pound note.”

Now there had been no money staked on the match at all,—­but it had been simply a trial of skill, as to which would kill the most birds in a given time.  And the proposition for that trial had come from Mr. Bonteen himself.  “I should not think of shooting for money,” said Phineas.