adiating folds of muslin lining the
brim, a black margin beyond the muslin being the felloe. Beneath this
brim her hair was massed low upon her brow, the colour of the thick
tresses being probably, from her complexion, repeated in the irises of
her large, deep eyes. Her rather nervous lips were thin and closed, so
that they only appeared as a delicate red line. A changeable temperament
was shown by that mouth--quick transitions from affection to aversion,
from a pout to a smile.

It was Avice the Third.

Jocelyn and the second Avice continued to gaze ardently at her.

'Ah! she is not coming in now; she hasn't time,' murmured the mother,
with some disappointment. 'Perhaps she means to run across in the
evening.'

The tall girl, in fact, went past and on till she was out of sight.
Pierston stood as in a dream. It was the very she, in all essential
particulars, and with an intensification of general charm, who had
kissed him forty years before. When he turned his head from the window
his eyes fell again upon the intermediate Avice at his side. Before but
the relic of the Well-Beloved, she had now become its empty shrine. Warm
friendship, indeed, he felt for her; but whatever that might have done
towards the instauration of a former dream was now hopelessly barred by
the rivalry of the thing itself in the guise of a lineal successor.

3. II. MISGIVINGS ON THE RE-EMBODIMENT

Pierston had been about to leave, but he sat down again on being asked
if he would stay and have a cup of tea. He hardly knew for a moment what
he did; a dim thought that Avice--the renewed Avice--might come into the
house made his reseating himself an act of spontaneity.

He forgot that twenty years earlier he had called the now Mrs. Pierston
an elf, a witch; and that lapse of time had probably not diminished the
subtleties implied by those epithets. He did not know that she had noted
every impression that her daughter had made upon him.

How he contrived to attenuate and disperse the rather tender
personalities he had opened up with the new Avice's mother, Pierston
never exactly defined. Perhaps she saw more than he thought she
saw--read something in his face--knew that about his nature which he
gave her no credit for knowing. Anyhow, the conversation took the form
of a friendly gossip from that minute, his remarks being often given
while his mind was turned elsewhere.

But a chill passed through Jocelyn when there had been time for
re