What was he? A young fellow, twenty, with only a little money and all his way to make in the world. And what was she? A grand young lady, rather younger than himself, it was true, but seeming years older, who was a great heiress, they said, and expected to marry a lord, someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth, whose fortune had been made for him by other people. Moreover, his father hated her because their religious views were different, and her father hated him, or used to, for other reasons.

Yes, it was quite impossible--and yet Nature seemed to take no account of that: Nature seemed to tell him that it was absolutely possible, and indeed right, and what she, Nature, wished. Also this same persistent Nature seemed to suggest to him that Isobel was her most willing and obedient pupil, and that perhaps if he could look into her heart he would find that she did care, and very much more than for the wealth and the hypothetical lord.

Nature seemed to suggest, too, that Isobel's thoughts were with him at that moment; that she was uncommonly near to him in soul if not in body; that she was thinking about him as he was thinking about her, and saying much the same things to herself as he was saying to himself. Indeed, he even began a whispered conversation with her, of a sort he would not have ventured upon had she been there, pausing between the sentences for her answers, which, as he imagined them, were very satisfactory indeed.

By degrees, however, question and answer grew less frequent and further apart as he dozed off and finally sank into a deep sleep. So deep was it, indeed, that he was awakened only by the clamour of the breakfast bell, and when he arrived downstairs, to be confronted by some cold bacon on an uncovered dish, his father had departed to the Diocesan Conference. Well, this fact had its consolations, and bacon, however cold, with contentment is better than bacon hot where contention is.

So he ate it and anything else he could find with appetite, and then went upstairs to shave and do his hair nicely and to put on a new suit of clothes, which he considered became him. Also, as he had still three-quarters of an hour to spare, he began to write a little poem about Isobel, which was a dismal failure, to tell the truth, since he could think of no satisfactory rhyme to her name, except "O well!" which, however he put it, sounded silly.

At last, rather too early, he threw the sheet of paper into the fireplace and started, only to find that although it still lacked a quarter of an hour to eleven, Isobel was already seated on that tree.




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