'Kiss me, Lyddy! Say that you love me!'

'I don't think I shall.'

'Lyddy, dear.'

It was said so gravely that Lydia, having finished her task, came round before the chair and looked in her sister's face.

'What?'

'I think I should die if I hadn't someone to love me.'

'I don't think you'll ever want that, Thyrza.'

The other drew a profound sigh, so profound that it left her bosom trembling. And for a few moments she sat in a dream.

Then she proceeded to change her dress and make ready for her formal appearance downstairs on the occasion of Egremont's visit. She had never been so anxious to look well. Lydia affected much impatience with her, but in truth was profoundly happy in her sister's happiness. She looked often at the beautiful face, and thought how proud Gilbert must be.

'Do you think I ought to shake hands with Mr. Egremont?' Thyrza asked.

'If he offers to, you must,' was Lydia's opinion. 'But not if he doesn't.'

'He did when he said good-bye at the school.'

Before long they heard the expected double knock at the house-door.

They had left their own door ajar that they might not miss this signal.

Thyrza sprang to the head of the stairs and listened. She heard Gilbert admit his visitor, and she heard the latter's voice. It was now a month since the meeting at the school, but the voice sounded so exactly as she expected that it brought back every detail of that often-recalled interview, and made her heart throb with excitement.

She was now to wait a whole quarter of an hour.

'Sit down and read,' said Lydia, who had herself begun to sew in the usual methodical way.

Thyrza pretended to obey. For two minutes she sat still, then asked how they were to know when a quarter of an hour had passed.

'I'll tell you,' said the other. 'Sit quiet, there's a good baby, and I'll buy you a cake next time we go out.'

Thyrza drew in her breath--and somehow the time was lived through.

'Now I think you may go,' Lydia said.

Thyrza seemed to have become indifferent. She turned over a page of her book, and at length rose very slowly. Lydia watched her askance; she thought she saw signs of timidity. But Thyrza presently moved to the door and went downstairs with her lightest step.

Gilbert had told her not to knock. Her hand was on the knob some moments before she ventured to turn it. She heard Egremont laughing--his natural laugh which was so attractive--and then there fell a silence. She entered.

No, Gilbert had not seated his visitor in the easy chair; that must be reserved for someone of more importance. Egremont rose with a look of pleasure.

'You know Miss Trent already?' Gilbert said to him.

Thyrza drew near. She did not hear very distinctly what Egremont was saying, but certainly he was offering to shake hands. Then Gilbert placed the easy chair in a convenient position, and she did her best to sit as she always did. Her manner was not awkward--it was impossible for her to be awkward--but she was afraid of saying something that 'wasn't grammar,' and to Egremont's agreeable remarks she replied shortly. Yet even this only gave her an air of shyness which was itself a grace. When Grail had entered into the conversation she was able to collect herself.

Gilbert said presently: 'Miss Trent is going to take Bunce's child to Eastbourne to-morrow, to Mrs. Ormonde's.'

'Indeed!' Egremont exclaimed. 'I was there on Wednesday and heard that the child was coming. But this arrangement hadn't been made then, I think?'

'No. Somebody else was to have gone, but she has found she can't.'

'You will be glad to know Mrs. Ormonde, I'm sure,' Egremont said to Thyrza.

'And I'm glad to go to the seaside,' Thyrza returned. 'I've never seen the sea.'

'Haven't you? How I wish I could have your enjoyment of to-morrow, then!'

Mrs. Grail was knitting. She said: 'I think you have voyaged a great deal, sir?'

It led to talk of travel. Egremont was drawn into stories of East and West. Ah, how good it was to get out of the circle of social prophecy!

It was like breathing the very mid Atlantic sky to talk gaily and freely of things wherein no theory was involved, which left aside every ideal save that of joyous living. Thyrza listened. He--he before her--had trodden lands whereof the names were to her like echoes from fairy tales; he had passed days and nights on the bosom of the great sea, which she looked forward to beholding almost with fear; he had seen it in tempest, and the laughing descriptions he gave of vast green rolling mountains made to her inward sight an awful reality.

'You never thought of going to one of the Colonies?' Egremont asked of Gilbert.

'Yes, years ago,' was the reply, in the tone of a man who sees the trouble of life behind him. 'I think at one time my mother rather despised me because I couldn't make up my mind to go and seek my fortune.'

'I never despised you, my dear,' said the old lady, 'but that was when some friends of ours were sending wonderful news from Australia, sir, and I believe I did half try to persuade Gilbert to go. His health was very bad, and I thought it might have done him good in all ways.'

'By-the-by,' remarked Gilbert, 'Ackroyd talks of going to Canada.'

'Ackroyd?' said Egremont. 'I'm not surprised to hear that.'

Thyrza had looked at Gilbert anxiously.

'Who told you that?' she asked.

'He told me himself, Thyrza, last night.'

She saw that Egremont was gazing at her; her eyes fell, and she became silent.

Egremont, in the course of the talk, wondered at his position in this little room. He knew that it was one of very few houses in Lambeth in which he could have been at his ease; perhaps there was not another. It seemed to him that he had thrown off a great deal that was artificial in behaviour and in habits of speech, that he had reverted to that self which came to him from his parents, and he felt better for the change.

The air of simplicity in the room and its occupants was healthful; of natural refinement there was abundance, only affectation was missing.

Would it have been a hardship if his father had failed to amass money, and he had grown up in such a home as this? He knew well enough that by going, say, next door he could pass into a domestic sphere of a very different kind, to the midst of a life compact of mean slavery, of ignorance, of grossness. This was enormously the exception. But his own home would have been not unlike this. Poverty could not have taken away his birthright of brains, and perhaps some such piece of luck might have fallen to him as had now to Gilbert Grail. Perhaps, too--why not, indeed!--he would have known Thyrza Trent. Certainly he would have seen her by chance here or there in Lambeth, and he--the young workman he might have been--assuredly would not have let her pass and forget her.

Why, in that case, perchance he might have--

He had lost himself for a moment. Thyrza was standing before him with a cup of tea: he noticed that the cup shook a little in the saucer.

'Will you have some tea, sir?' she said.

Mrs. Grail had been perturbed somewhat on the question of refreshments.

Gilbert decided that to offer a cup of tea would be the best thing; Egremont, he knew, dined late, and would not want anything to eat.

'Thank you, Miss Trent.'

She brought him sugar and milk. This was quite her own idea. 'Some people don't take sugar, some don't take milk; so you ought to let them help themselves to such things.' He took both. She noticed his hand, how shapely it was, how beautiful the finger-nails were. And then he looked at her with a smile of thanks, not more than of thanks. Could anyone convey thanks more graciously?