Major Bingo's blustering admonitions to perspiring porters to put
the luggage in one compartment, to stow canvas bags of golf-clubs and
fishing-rods in the racks, and to damage bicycles at their personal peril,
since the company evaded liability.

It had been Saxham's wish that Lady Hannah and Major Wrynche should be his
wife's guests at Plas Bendigaid. Looking from her bedroom casements over
the syringas and lilacs and larches, the laburnums and hawthorns and
hollies of the low-walled garden that ended at the sheer cliff-edge, from
whence you looked down upon the tops of the pines and chestnuts, whose
green foliage hid the shining metals of the iron way, and made a sea of
verdure in place of the salt blue waves that once had lapped and sighed
there--gazing across the powdery sand-dunes that were prickly with
sea-holly and gay with flaunting poppies and purple scabious, the pink and
white convolvulus, and the thorny yellow dwarf rose, that somehow finds
nourishment in the pale sand of Herion Links, to the line of white
breakers that rose and fell more than a mile away. Lynette sighed a small
sigh of resignation at the prospect of long weeks to be spent in the
society of these pleasant, well-bred, rather fidgety people Owen had
chosen to bear her company.

Of course, Owen could not leave his patients! He had explained that, and
Lady Hannah and her big Major were old friends of hers and his. And the
little woman with the jangling laugh and the snapping black eyes had known
the Mother in her youth....

At that remembrance Lynette's eyes went lovingly to the copy of the
Millais portrait, and as the sun burst through the streaming wind-chased
clouds, and smote bright diamond-rays from the dripping window-panes, the
firm lips seemed to curve in the rare, sudden smile, the great grey eyes
to gleam with life and tenderness.

Ah, to spend a long, sweet summer here, alone with that dearest of all
companions! Lynette's white throat swelled at the thought, and a mist
blotted out the noble face, crowned with its diadem of rich black tresses.
She wiped the tears away, and beheld a world miraculously changed. For
land and sea were drenched in radiant sunshine.

She unlatched the casements and threw them wide, and clean, salt, sweet
air came streaming in, bringing the fragrance of mignonette and wallflower
and sweetbriar, and the aromatic smells of the larch and pine. She leaned
her white arms upon the grey stone window-sill, and d