gretfully, some wonderful sight or other only to be found in London."

"Really," she declared, "I am getting afraid of you. You are more
observant than I thought."

"There is one gift, at least," he answered, "which we country folk are
supposed to possess. We know truth when we see it. But I am saying more
than I have any right to. I don't want to make you angry, Clara!"

She shook her head.

"You won't do that," she said. "But I don't think you quite understand.
Let me tell you something. You know that I am an orphan, don't you? I do
not remember my father at all, and I can only just remember my mother. I
was brought up at a pleasant but very dreary boarding-school. I had very
few friends, and no one came to see me except my uncle, who was always
very kind, but always in a desperate hurry. I stayed there until I was
seventeen. Then my uncle came and fetched me, and brought me straight
here. Now that is exactly what my life has been. What do you think of
it?"

"Very dull indeed," he answered, frankly.

She nodded.

"I have never been in London at all," she continued. "I really only know
what men and women are like from books, or the one or two types I have
met around here. Now, do you think that that is enough to satisfy one? Of
course it is very beautiful here, I know, and sometimes when the sun is
shining and the birds singing and the sea comes up into the creeks,
well, one almost feels content. But the sun doesn't always shine,
Richard, and there are times when I am right down bored, and I feel as
though I'd love to draw my allowance from uncle, pack my trunk, and go up
to London, on my own!"

He laughed. Somehow all that she had said had sounded so natural that
some part of his uneasiness was already passing away.

"Yours," he admitted, "is an extreme case. I really don't know why your
uncle has never taken you up for a month or so in the season."

"We have lived here for four years," she said, "and he has never once
suggested it. He goes himself, of course, sometimes, but I am quite sure
that he doesn't enjoy it. For days before he fidgets about and looks
perfectly miserable, and when he comes back he always goes off for a long
walk by himself. I am perfectly certain that for some reason or other
he hates going. Yet he seems to have been everywhere, to know every one.
To hear him talk with Mrs. Handsell is like a new Arabian Nights to me."

He nodded.

"Your uncle was a very distinguished man," he sai