n, she said to Elizabeth, "I am so glad that Mr. Herrick has
promised to come to-morrow; I have just had a telegram from him;" and
she handed it to her sister. Elizabeth was rather a long time reading
it. "Shall be with you by dinner-time. Shall take fly. Stay two nights."

"Is it not good of him to come, when he is so dreadfully busy?"
continued Dinah in her placid, satisfied voice. "Cedric will be
delighted to have him! Do you think we ought to ask Theo and Mr.
Carlyon to dinner, or would Mr. Herrick prefer just a family party?"

"Oh, I think a family party will suit him best," returned Elizabeth
gravely; "Theo rather bores him with her parish talk;" and Dinah said
no more.

CHAPTER XLIII

A MAY AFTERNOON

What is this love that now on angel wing
Sweeps us amid the stars in passionate calm.
--MACDONALD.

Elizabeth stood on the terrace in the sweet stillness of a May
afternoon. She had been gathering flowers for the dinner-table and
drawing-room--masses of white and mauve lilac, long golden trails of
laburnum, dainty pink and white May blossoms--but though the Guelder
roses almost dropped into her hand, she passed them by untouched and
with averted eyes. All her life they had been her special favourites,
but now they recalled too vividly a painful episode--the day when
Malcolm Herrick so sternly and so sorrowfully refused her his
friendship.

Malcolm had been nearly twenty-four hours at the Wood House, and she
had hardly exchanged a dozen words with him, and already he had
signified his intention of returning to town the next morning, in spite
of Cedric's vehement protestations. He had arrived so late the previous
evening that he had had only time for a hasty greeting before he went
to his room to prepare for dinner. During the evening the young couple
had naturally engrossed his attention. A harder-hearted man than
Malcolm would have been touched by Anna's innocent happiness and her
shy pride in her handsome young lover. "Does she not look lovely!"
Elizabeth had said to him in a low voice as they were all gathered on
the terrace after dinner. And indeed the girl looked very fair and
sweet in her white silk dress, with a row of pearls clasped round her
soft throat. "You are right; and yet I never thought Anna really
pretty," he returned in a cool, critical tone. "Happiness is generally
a beautifier, and my little girl certainly looks her best to-nigh