Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/111

Rh first question. I shook my head. "Would to God I were!" Her face lit up. "Patience; it is just coming." She waved her hand, for at that moment she was rudely thrust from the carriage. I never saw her again, but I was engaged to Richard two months later. It came in this wise.

One fine day in August I was walking in the Botanical Gardens with my sister. Richard was there. We immediately stopped and shook hands, and asked each other a thousand questions of the four intervening years; and all the old Boulogne memories and feelings returned to me. He asked me if I came to the Gardens often. I said, "Oh yes, we always come and read and study here from eleven to one, because it is so much nicer than studying in the hot room at this season." "That is quite right," he said. "What are you studying?" I held up the book I had with me that day, an old friend, Disraeli's Tancred, the book of my heart and taste, which he explained to me. We were in the Gardens about an hour, and when I had to leave he gave me a peculiar look, as he did at Boulogne. I hardly looked at him, yet I felt it, and had to turn away. When I got home, my mind was full of wonder and presentiment; I felt frightened and agitated; and I looked at myself in the glass and thought myself a fright!

Next morning we went to the Botanical Gardens again. When we got there, he was there too, alone, composing some poetry to show to Monckton Milnes on some pet subject. He came forward, and said laughingly, "You won't chalk up 'Mother will be