appy in each other's company, the more she will
get to take a kindly interest in Dora as a possible and desirable wife
for Bertie."

"My dear," said the vicar's wife resignedly, "my own Sybil was thrown
together with Bertie under the most romantic circumstances--I'll tell you
about it some day--but it made no impression whatever on Teresa; she put
her foot down in the most uncompromising fashion, and Sybil married an
Indian civilian."

"Quite right of her," said Mrs. Yonelet with vague approval; "it's what
any girl of spirit would have done. Still, that was a year or two ago, I
believe; Bertie is older now, and so is Teresa. Naturally she must be
anxious to see him settled."

The vicar's wife reflected that Teresa seemed to be the one person who
showed no immediate anxiety to supply Bertie with a wife, but she kept
the thought to herself.

Mrs. Yonelet was a woman of resourceful energy and generalship; she
involved the other members of the house-party, the deadweight, so to
speak, in all manner of exercises and occupations that segregated them
from Bertie and Dora, who were left to their own devisings--that is to
say, to Dora's devisings and Bertie's accommodating acquiescence. Dora
helped in the Christmas decorations of the parish church, and Bertie
helped her to help. Together they fed the swans, till the birds went on
a dyspepsia-strike, together they played billiards, together they
photographed the village almshouses, and, at a respectful distance, the
tame elk that browsed in solitary aloofness in the park. It was "tame"
in the sense that it had long ago discarded the least vestige of fear of
the human race; nothing in its record encouraged its human neighbours to
feel a reciprocal confidence.

Whatever sport or exercise or occupation Bertie and Dora indulged in
together was unfailingly chronicled and advertised by Mrs. Yonelet for
the due enlightenment of Bertie's grandmother.

"Those two inseparables have just come in from a bicycle ride," she would
announce; "quite a picture they make, so fresh and glowing after their
spin."

"A picture needing words," would be Teresa's private comment, and as far
as Bertie was concerned she was determined that the words should remain
unspoken.

On the afternoon after Christmas Day Mrs. Yonelet dashed into the drawing-
room, where her hostess was sitting amid a circle of guests and teacups
and muffin-dishes. Fate had placed what seemed like a trump-card in the
h