"The best from these windows; some people[Pg 44] think, I believe, the prettiest view you have," said Tom, gathering force, "the water is always so pretty."

[Pg 44]

"Yes, the water," she assented listlessly.

"Quite a romantic view," continued Sedley, a little bitterly.

"Yes, every pretty view is romantic," she acquiesced, looking out for a moment again. "If one knew exactly what romantic means—it's a word we use so often, and so vaguely."

"And can't you define it, Agnes?"

"Define it? I really don't think I could."

"Well, that does surprise me."

"You are so much more clever than I, of course it does."

"No, quite the contrary; you are clever—I'm serious, I assure you—and I'm a dull fellow, and I know it quite well—I can't define it; but that doesn't surprise me."

"Then we are both in the same case; but I won't allow it's stupidity—the idea is quite undefinable, and that is the real difficulty. You can't describe the perfume of a violet, but you know it quite well, and I really think flowers a more interesting subject than romance."

"Oh, really! not, surely, than the romance of that view. It is so romantic!"

"You seem quite in love with it," said she,[Pg 45] with a little laugh, and began again with a grave face to stitch in the glory of her saint in celestial yellow worsted.

[Pg 45]

"The water—yes—and the old trees of Ware, and just that tower, at the angle of the house."

Agnes just glanced through her window, but said nothing.

"I think," said Sedley, "if I were peopling this scene, you know, I should put my hero in that Castle of Ware—that is, if I could invent a romance, which, of course, I couldn't." He spoke with a meaning, I think.

"Why should there be heroes in romances?" asked Miss Agnes, looking nevertheless toward Ware, with her hand and the needle resting idly upon the frame. "Don't you think a romance ought to 

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