son
reminded Sophy strikingly of Cecil. This was just Cecil's tone with
presuming strangers.

"Very well, Bobby--do _you_ know why it's good for me to be laughed at,
but not for you?"

"I don't fink it matters," said Chesney's son, again in exactly the tone
that Chesney would have used. Sophy felt too awed to feel amused. She
felt that with the law of continuance thus powerful, death, in one
sense, ceased to exist.

"You don't like me, do you, Bobby?" asked Loring, looking queerly at the
child.

"Not much--p'ease to 'scuse me," replied Bobby.

"Funny little tot you are," said Loring, rather hurt. Then, to his
surprise, he suddenly realised that he on his side, didn't really like
Bobby. It seemed as if the child came wilfully between him and Sophy. He
walked on moodily, cutting with his riding-crop at the pyred flames of
golden-rod, his handsome, short-lipped mouth very sullen.

"What's the matter?" asked Sophy, to break another too long silence.
"You look like a tinted marble of Endymion in the sulks."

Loring turned on her passionately.

"Mrs. Chesney," said he, "would you mind letting up on my rotten
appearance! It isn't my fault that I've got a nose like a damned
statue's!"

His face was scarlet. Sophy put her hands up to her own face to temper
the brutality of her wild mirth.

V

But this laughter of Sophy was so winsome, as she glanced at him through
her shielding fingers, that Loring gave way and began to laugh himself.
This was another new sensation for him--the joining in a laugh against
himself.

"I'm a frightful ass, I know, to mind so much when you tease me," he
said as they walked on. "But you make me feel such a fool--such a
'pretty fellow'...."

"You _are_ a pretty fellow," murmured Sophy. "When you get red with
anger like that you're quite dazzling."

"Oh, I say! Don't you think you're a bit _too_ hard on me?" Loring
protested.

He still writhed inwardly. It is acute agony to six and twenty to be
made fun of by the object of its adoration.

Bobby's voice piped in again.

"_I_ don't fink you're pretty," he remarked.

"Thanks, old chap," said Loring, this time without laughter.

They had reached the woods, on whose edge stood the big chestnuts, all
one-sided from the reaching of their branches towards the free sunlight
of the open. Behind them stretched the forest, a glitter of trembling
yellow, shot with the velvet black of twigs and stems. Here and there a
bough of mapl