t succeeded, but she loved him and wanted to make that
manifest.

"I can't bear to have you doing irresponsible things with Madame
Beattie. She's not fit--"

"Not fit for me to play with? Madame Beattie won't hurt me."

"She may hurt Lydia."

"Lydia!"

The word leaped out of some deep responsiveness she did not understand.

"Don't you know how much they are together? They go driving."

"Well, what's that? Madame Beattie's a good old sport. She won't harm
Lydia."

But instead of keeping up his work, he went on to the house with her.
Miss Amabel would not go in and when he had said good-bye to
her--affectionately, charmingly, as if to assure her that, after all,
she needn't fear him even with Weedie who wasn't important enough to
slay--he entered the house in definite search of Lydia. He went to the
library, and there she was, in the window niche, where she sat to watch
him. Day by day Lydia sat there when he was in the garden and she was
not busy and he knew it was a favourite seat of hers for, glancing over
his rows of corn, he could see the top of her head bent over a book. He
did not know how long she pored over a page with eyes that saw him, a
wraith of him hovering over the print, nor that when their passionate
depths grew hungrier for the actual sight of him, how she threw one
glance at his working figure and bent to her book again. As he came
suddenly in upon her she sprang up and faced him, the book closed upon a
trembling finger.

"Lydia," said he, "you're great chums with Madame Beattie, aren't you?"

Lydia gave a little sigh of a relief she hardly understood. What she
expected him to ask her she did not know, but there were strange warm
feelings in her heart she would not have shown to Jeff. She could have
shown them before that minute--when he had said the thing that ought not
even to be remembered: "I only love you." Before that, she thought, she
had been quite simply his sister. Now she was a watchful servitor of a
more fervid sort. Jeffrey thought she was afraid of being scolded about
her queer old crony.

"Sit down," he said. "There's nothing to be ashamed of in liking Madame
Beattie. You do like her, don't you?"

"Oh, yes," said Lydia. "I like her very much."

She had sunk back in her chair and closed the book though she kept it in
her lap. Jeffrey sat astride a chair and folded his arms on the top.
Some of the blinds had been closed to keep out the heat, and the dusk
hid the deep, crisp