t the gates are never locked, so you can reach us from the road
that way if you're walking. If you want to drive, you must go a quarter
of a mile higher up, just below the Pool. Good-by, Madame Zabriska."

Mina watched him all the way down the hill. He had made an impression on
her--an intellectual impression, not a sentimental one. There was
nothing of the boy about him, unless it were in that little flourish
over the antiquity of his house and its surroundings; even that might be
the usual thing--she had not seen enough of his class to judge. There
was too that love of the place which he had shown. Lastly, there was
the odd air of wariness and watching; such it seemed to her, and it
consented to seem nothing else.

"I wonder," she thought, "if he knows anything about Mrs Fitzhubert--and
I wonder if it would make any difference to him!" Memory carried her
back in an instant to the moment when she, Mr Cholderton's Imp, heard
that beautiful woman cry, "Think of the difference it makes, the
enormous difference!" She drew in her breath in a sudden gasp. An idea
had flashed into her mind, showing her for the first time the chance of
a situation which had never yet crossed her thoughts.

"Good gracious, is it possible that he couldn't keep it, or that his
mother couldn't give it to him, all the same?"

III

ON GUARD

Harry Tristram was just on twenty-three; to others, and to himself too
perhaps (if a man himself can attain any clear view), he seemed older.
Even the externals of his youth had differed from the common run. Sent
to school like other boys, he had come home from Harrow one Easter for
the usual short holiday. He had never returned; he had not gone to the
University; he had been abroad a good deal, travelling and studying, but
always in his mother's company. It was known that she was in bad health;
it was assumed that either she was very exacting or he very devoted,
since to separate him from her appeared impossible. Yet those who
observed them together saw no imperiousness on her part and no excess of
sentiment on his. Friendliness based on a thorough sympathy of mind was
his attitude if his demeanor revealed it truly; while Lady Tristram was
to her son as she was to all the world at this time, a creature of
feelings now half cold and of moods that reflected palely the intense
impulses of her youth. But a few years over forty, she grew faded and
faint in mind, it seemed, as well as in body, and was n