A pink spot of pleasure glowed on Dolly's round cheek to think that

a real young man, in good society, whom she met at so grand a house

as the Compsons', should seem to be quite taken with her.

"Who is he, Winnie?" she asked, trying to look less self-conscious.

"He's extremely good-looking."

"Oh, he's Mr. Hawkshaw's stepson, over at Combe Mary," Winnie

answered with a nod. "Mr. Hawkshaw's the vicar there till Mamma's

nephew is ready to take the living--what they call a warming-pan.

But Walter Brydges is Mrs. Hawkshaw's son by her first husband.

Old Mr. Brydges was the squire of Combe Mary, and Walter's his only

child. He's very well off. You might do worse, dear. He's

considered quite a catch down in this part of the country."

"How old is he?" Dolly asked, innocently enough, standing up by the

bedside in her dainty white nightgown. But Winnie caught at her

meaning with the preternatural sharpness of the girl brought up in

immediate contact with the landed interest. "Oh, he's of age," she

answered quickly, with a knowing nod. "He's come into the

property; he has nobody on earth but himself to consult about his

domestic arrangements."

Dolly was young; Dolly was pretty; Dolly's smile won the world;

Dolly was still at the sweetest and most susceptible of ages.

Walter Brydges was well off; Walter Brydges was handsome; Walter

Brydges had all the glamour of a landed estate, and an Oxford

education. He was a young Greek god in a Norfolk shooting-jacket.

Moreover, he was a really good and pleasant young fellow. What

wonder, therefore, if before a week was out, Dolly was very really

and seriously in love with him? And what wonder if Walter Brydges

in turn, caught by that maiden glance, was in love with Dolly? He

had every excuse, for she was lithe, and beautiful, and a joyous

companion; besides being, as the lady's maid justly remarked, a

perfect lady.

One day, after Dolly had been a fortnight at Upcombe, the Compsons

gave a picnic in the wild Combe undercliff. 'Tis a broken wall of

chalk, tumbled picturesquely about in huge shattered masses, and

deliciously overgrown with ferns and blackthorn and golden clusters

of close-creeping rock-rose. Mazy paths thread tangled labyrinths of

fallen rock, or wind round tall clumps of holly-bush and bramble.

They lighted their fire under the lee of one such buttress of broken

cliff, whose summit was festooned with long sprays of clematis, or

"old man's beard," as the common west-country name expressively

phrases it. Thistledown hovered on the basking air. There they sat

and drank their tea, couched on beds of fern or propped firm against

the rock; and when tea was over, they wandered off, two and two,

ostensibly for nothing, but really for the true business of the

picnic--to afford the young men and maidens of the group some chance

of enjoying, unspied, one another's society.




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