never been
irritable, to whom it would have seemed the worst of taste to question
good taste in his mother.

More than one person was irritable with the Dowager that day. The
General was furiously irritable over the transparent man[oe]uvre by
which she packed off the young people together.

"Enough to spoil the whole thing," he thought, pursing his lips and
pushing out his eyebrows as he did when he was annoyed. "Indelicate!
Stupid! I'd rather have her when she was disagreeable. My poor Nell! She
did not look very happy as she went. I had a great mind to go with her
and spoil things, after all."

The cousins found their way to Nelly's favourite haunt, the little
coppice of low almond trees with the troops of narcissi and violets and
primroses colouring all the brown earth. They went into the little
chapel together. It smelt of incense after the ceremonies of the
morning. The mournful black had been removed. There were flowers on a
side-table, and the sacristan was setting the candlesticks on the fair
white cloth which he had just laid along the altar. The scents in the
woods at home had been thin and faint by these. Standing with his hat in
his hand at the threshold of the little chapel, Robin Drummond had a
memory of the scent of wild thyme.

He was not one to hesitate when he had made up his mind. His mother had
told him that Nelly was waiting, ready for the word which might have
been hers any time those two or three years back. Her father thought the
time had come to arrange a date for their marriage. His mother, too, was
anxious to see him settled. Neither she nor the General was young any
longer. They had a right to look upon their children's happiness for the
years that were left to them of life.

The young people were high on a mountain path, where few were to be met
with except an occasional Englishman climbing like themselves, or the
goatherds with their little flocks. He had helped her up a steep bit of
climbing. The exertion had brought an unwonted colour to her face. Her
hand lay in his, soft and warm. His closed on it and held it. It was the
hand of one who had never done anything toilsome in her life, the hand
of a petted darling. He remembered another hand, thin, brown, capable.
None of Mary's later years of ease had given her the hand of a woman of
leisure. It was the hand of a comrade, a helpmate. Nelly's hand
fluttered in his and was suddenly cold.

"Well, Nell," he said, "do you know what I ca