"If, in July, on your twenty-third
birthday, you still wish to break your mother's heart--I suppose you
must do so. But I ask of you the unfettered reflection of three months
first."
This seemed reasonable enough, and Paul consented to start upon a tour
round Europe--not having spoken the final fatal and binding words to
Isabella Waring. They made their adieux in the pouring rain under a
dripping oak in the lane by the Vicarage gate.
Paul was six foot two, and Isabella quite six foot, and broad in
proportion. They were dressed almost alike, and at a little distance,
but for the lady's scanty petticoat, it would have been difficult to
distinguish her sex.
"Good-bye, old chap," she said, "We have been real pals, and I'll not
forget you!"
But Paul, who was feeling sentimental, put it differently.
"Good-bye, darling," he whispered with a suspicion of tremble in his
charming voice. "I shall never love any woman but you--never, never in
my life."
Cuckoo! screamed the bird in the tree.
And now we are getting nearer the episode. Paris bored Paul--he did
not know its joys and was in no mood to learn them. He mooned about
and went to the races. His French was too indifferent to make theatres
a pleasure, and the attractive ladies who smiled at his blue eyes were
for him _defendues_.
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