ROSE ARMIGER, in a few moments, was joined by Tony, and they came up the lawn together to where Jean Martle stood talking with Paul. Here, at the approach of the master of Bounds, this young lady anxiously inquired if Effie had not been well enough to accompany him. She had expected to find her there; then, failing that, had taken for granted he would bring her.

“I’ve left the question, my dear Jean, in her nurse’s hands,” Tony said. “ She had been bedizened from top to toe, and then, on some slight appearance of being less well, had been despoiled¹, denuded² and disappointed. She’s a poor little lamb of sacrifice. They were at her again, when I came away, with the ribbons and garlands; but there was apparently³ much more to come, and I couldn’t answer for it that a single sneeze wouldn’t again lay everything low. It’s in the bosom⁴ of the gods. I couldn’t wait.”

“You were too impatient to be with dear, de lightful us” Rose suggested.

Tony, with a successful air of very light comedy, smiled and inclined himself. “ I was too impatient to be with you, Miss Armiger.” The lapse⁵ of four years still presented him in such familiar mourning as might consort⁶ with a country nook on a summer afternoon; but it also allowed undiminished relief to a manner of addressing women which was clearly instinctive⁷ and habitual⁸ and which, at the same time, by good fortune, had the grace of flattery without phrases and of irony⁹ without impertinence. He was a little older, but he was not heavier; he was a little worn, but he was not worn dull. His presence was, anywhere and at any time, as much as ever the clock at the moment it strikes. Paul Beever’s little eyes, after he appeared, rested on Rose with an expression which might have been that of a man counting the waves produced on a sheet of water by the

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