He threw himself down at full length on the turf in the shadow of a giant beech. Dolly and her remaining companion passed slowly on. This was not what she had reckoned upon; but she saw that her father wished to be left alone, and she did not feel, nevertheless, that she could go home and leave the party. Slowly she and Mr. St. Leger sauntered on, from the shadow of one great tree to another; Dolly thinking what she should do. When they were gotten out of sight and out of earshot, she too stopped, and sat down on a shady bank which the roots of an immense oak had thrown up around its base.
"What now?" said Lawrence.
"This is a good place to stay. Father wishes to be left to himself."
"But aren't you going any further?"
"There is nothing to be gained by going any further. It is as pretty here as anywhere in the wood."
"We might go on and see the pheasantry. Have you seen the pheasantry?"
"No."
"That does not depend on the housekeeper's pleasure; and the people on the place are not all Methodists. I fancy we should have no trouble in getting to see that. Come! It is really very fine, and worth a walk to see. I am not much of a place-hunter, but the Brierley pheasantry is something by itself."
"Not to-day," said Dolly.
"Why not to-day? I can get the gate opened."
"You forget it is Sunday, Mr. St. Leger."
"I do not forget it," said he, throwing himself down on the bank beside her. "I came here to have the day with you. It's a holiday. Mr. Copley keeps a fellow awfully busy other days, if one has the good fortune to be his secretary. I remember particularly well that it is Sunday. What about it? Can't a fellow have it, now he has got it?"
The blue eyes were looking with a surprised sort of complaint in them, yet not wholly discontented, at Dolly. How could they be discontented?
So fair an object to rest upon and so curiosity-provoking too, as she was. Dolly's advantages were not decked out at all; she was dressed in a simple white gown; and there were none of the formalities of fine ladyism about her; a very plain little girl; and yet, Lawrence was not far wrong when he thought her the fairest thing his eyes had ever seen.
_Her_ eyes had such a mingling of the childlike and the wise; her hair curled in such an artless, elegant way about her temples and in her neck; the neck itself had such a pretty set and carriage, the figure was so graceful in its girlish outlines; and above all, her manner had such an inexplicable combination of the utterly free and the utterly unapproachable. Lawrence lay thinking all this, or part of it; Dolly was thinking how she should dispose of him. She could not well say anything that would directly seem to condemn her father. And while she was thinking what answer she should make, Lawrence had forgot his question.
"Do you like this park?" he began on another tack.
"Oh, more than I can tell you! It is perfect. It is magnificent. There is nothing like it in all America. At least, _I_ never saw anything like it there."
"Why not?" said Lawrence. "I mean, why is there not anything like this there?"
Then Dolly's face dimpled all up in one of its expressions of extreme sense of fun.
"We are not old enough," she said. "You know when these trees were young, our land was filled with the red men, and overgrown with forests."
"Well, those forests were old."
"Yes, but in a forest trees do not grow like this. They cannot. And then the forest had to be cut down."
"Then you like England better than America?"
"I never saw in my life anything half so beautiful as Brierley Park."
"You would be contented with such a home, wherever it might be?"
"As far as the trees went," said Dolly, with another ripple of fun breaking over her face.
"Tell me," said Lawrence, "are all American girls like you?"
"In what way? We do not all look alike."
"No, no; I do not mean looks; they are no more like you in _that_, than you say America resembles Brierley Park. But you are not like an English girl."
"I am afraid that is not an equal compliment to me. But why should Americans be different from English people? We went over from England only a little while ago."
"Institutions?" Lawrence ventured.
"What, because we have a President, and you have a King? What difference should that make?"
"Then you see no difference? Am I like an American, now?"
"You are not like my father, certainly. But I do not know any American young men--except one. And I don't know him."
"That sounds very much like a riddle. Won't you be so good as to explain?"
"There is no riddle," said Dolly. "I knew him when I was at school, a little girl, and I have never seen him since."
"Then you don't know him now, I should say."
"No. And yet I feel as if I knew him. I should know him if we saw each other again."
"Seems to have made a good deal of an impression!"
"Yes, I think he did. I liked him."
"Before you see him again you will have forgotten him," said Lawrence comfortably. "Do you not think you could forget America, if somebody would make you mistress of such a place as this?"
"And if everybody I loved was here? Perhaps," said Dolly, looking round her at the soft swelling green turf over which the trees stretched their great branches.
"But," said Lawrence, lying on his elbow and watching her, "would you want _everybody_ you love? The Bible says that a woman shall leave father and mother and cleave to her husband."
"No; the Bible says that is what the man shall do; leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife."
"They work it the other way," said Lawrence. "With us, it is the woman who leaves her family to go with the man."
"Mr. St. Leger," said Dolly suddenly, "father does not look well. What do you think is the matter with him?"
"Oh--aw--yes! Do you think he doesn't look well?" Lawrence answered vaguely.
"Not _ill_--but not just like himself either. What is it?"
"I--well, I have thought that myself sometimes," replied the young man.
"What is the matter with him?" Dolly repeated anxiously.
"Oh, not much, he spends too much time at--at his office, you know!"