Ramsden has ordered, to knit for the Jew’s basket; but they will keep.”

“Jew’s basket be —— sold! Never was utensil better named. Anything more Jewish than it—its contents, and their prices—cannot be conceived: but I see something, a very tiny curl, at the corners of your lip, which tells me that you know its merits as well as I do. Forget the Jew’s basket, then, and spend the day here as a change. Your uncle won’t break his heart at your absence?”

She smiled. “No.”

“The old Cossack! I daresay not,” muttered Moore. “Then stay and dine with Hortense; she will be glad of your company; I shall return in good time. We will have a little reading in the evening: the moon rises at half-past eight, and I will walk up to the rectory with you at nine. Do you agree?”

She nodded her head; and her eyes lit up.

Moore lingered yet two minutes: he bent over Caroline’s desk and glanced at her grammar, he fingered her pen, he lifted her bouquet and played with it; his horse stamped impatient; Fred. Murgatroyd hemmed and coughed at the gate, as if he wondered what in the world his master was doing. “Good-morning,” again said Moore, and finally vanished.

Hortense, coming in ten minutes after, found, to her surprise, that Caroline had not yet commenced her exercise.