arrangement of her modest toilet. Lubin had been requisitioned to
provide a special supply of the freshest and finest flowers for the
drawing-room, and she had herself gone to the pastrycook's to order
the cheese-cakes and cream-tarts on which the expected visitor was to
be regaled. Of course she kept on telling herself all the time what a
foolish old woman she was, and how silly Mr Ogilvie would think her if
he only knew of all her little fussy preparations; men who had knocked
about the world hated to be fidgeted over and made much of, and no
doubt it was quite natural they should. And then she went bustling off
to impress on Martha the expediency of giving the silver tea-service
an extra polish, and to be sure and see that the toast was crisp and
fresh. When at last she sat down with a book in front of her in order
to pass the time she found her attention wandering, and her thoughts
recurring to the last occasion on which she had seen Granville
Ogilvie. He had been rather a fine-looking young man in those
days--tall, straight, and well set up; and well she remembered the
whimsical way he had of speaking, the humorous glance of his eye, and
those baffling intonations of voice that made it so difficult for her
to be sure whether he were in jest or earnest. That he had
confessedly been attracted by her was a matter of common knowledge.
Why had she given him no encouragement? Perhaps it was because she had
never understood him; because she had never been able to feel any real
rapport between them, because their minds moved on different planes,
and never seemed to meet. She had no sense of humour, and no insight;
he was elusive, difficult to get into touch with; all she knew of him
was his exterior, and that, for her, was no guide to the man beneath.
Then he had dropped out of her life, and for five and twenty years she
had never heard of him. Whatever chance she may have had was gone, and
gone for ever. Did she regret it, now that she was able to look back
upon the past so calmly? She thought not. And yet, as she meditated on
those far-off days when she was young and pretty, the intervening
years seemed to be annihilated, and she felt herself once more a girl
of twenty-two, with a young man hovering around her, always on the
verge of a proposal that she herself staved off.

She was not agitated, but she was very curious to see what he would
look like, and just a little anxious lest there should be any
awkwardness about