, turned and greeted her, and he
seemed to be very well and almost gay. He showed no sign of even
remembering yesterday, and when presently Jeffrey came in and then
Lydia, they all behaved, Anne thought, like an ordinary family with no
queer problems round the corner.

After breakfast Jeffrey turned to Lydia and said quite simply: "Come
into the orchard and walk a little."

But to Lydia, Anne saw, with a mild surprise, his asking must have meant
something not so simple. Her face flushed all over, and a misty
sweetness, like humility and gratitude, came into her eyes. Jeffrey,
too, caught that morning glow, only to find his task the sadder. How to
say things to her! and after all, what was it possible to say? They went
down into the orchard, and Lydia, by his side, paced demurely. He saw
she was trying to fit her steps to his impatient stride, and shortened
up on it. He felt very tender toward Lydia. At last, when it seemed as
if they might be out of range of the windows, and, he unreasonably felt,
more free, he broke out abruptly:

"I've got a lot of things to say to you." Lydia glanced up at him with
that wonderful, exasperating look, half humility, and waited. It seemed
to her he must have a great deal to say. "I don't believe it's possible
for you--for a girl--to understand what it would be for a man in my
place to come home and find everybody so sweet and kind. I mean you--and
Anne."

Now he felt nothing short of shame. But she took him quickly enough. He
didn't have to go far along the shameful road. She glanced round at him
again, and, knowing what the look must be, he did not meet it. He could
fancy well the hurt inquiry leaping into those innocent eyes.

"What have I done," she asked, and his mind supplied the accusatory
inference, "that you don't love me any more?"

He hastened to answer.

"You've been everything that's sweet and kind." He added, whether wisely
or not he could not tell, what seemed to him the truth: "I haven't got
hold of myself. I thought it would be an easy stunt to come back and
stay a while and then go away and get into something permanent. But it's
no such thing. Lydia, I don't understand people very well. I don't
understand myself. I'm afraid I'm a kind of blackguard."

"Oh, no," said Lydia gravely. "You're not that."

She did not understand him, but she was, in her beautiful confidence,
sure he was right. She was hurt. There was the wound in her heart, and
that new sensation o