ll the guests supplied, had thrown herself down to rest on a
stone under a tree. She had taken off her hat, and her hair was flecked
with sunshine as she leaned her head back with a little air of lassitude
and weariness against the scarred bark. But in spite of weariness she was
smiling and content. The rest was delicious, the peaceful quiet
enchanting, the air sweet after the fetid odours of the town; and it was
sweet, too, whenever she glanced at the Reverend Julius Fraithorn, who was
lying at her feet, or Beauvayse, who fanned her alternately with a leafy
branch and the tea-tray, to behold her own beauty reflected in the
admiring eyes of two young and handsome men.

The Mother had never seen her thus before. She had been absent from the
scenes of Lynette's little social triumphs. Now a great tenderness swelled
in her bosom, and a great pity gripped her throat, and wrung the bitter,
slow tears into her eyes.

"She is happy," she whispered in her heart. "She has forgotten just for a
little while, and her kingdom of womanhood is hers, unspoiled, and the
present moment is sweet, and the future she has no thought of. My poor,
poor love! Let her go on forgetting, even if it is only for a day."

His voice beside her made her start. He was still speaking of Lynette.

"Her type is unusual--amongst Colonials."

She returned: "She was born in the Colony, I believe."

"Ah! but of British parents, surely? I once knew an English lady," he went
steadily on, "whom she resembles strikingly."

Her eyes were inscrutable, and her lips were folded close.

"She was the wife of the Colonel commanding my old Regiment--Sir George
Hawting. A grand old warrior, and something of a martinet. He married a
third daughter of the Duke of Runcorn--Lady Lucy Briddwater."

She said without the betraying flicker of an eyelash: "I have seen the
lady named...."

He said, with a prick of self-reproach for having again turned the barb
that festered in her bosom:

"Lady Lucy was a very lovely creature, and a very impulsive one. She lived
not happily, and she died tragically."

There was the ring of steel and the coldness of ice in the Mother's words:

"She met the fate she chose."

He thought, looking at her:

"What a woman this is! How silent, how resourceful, how calm, how
immeasurably deep! And why does she think of me as an opponent?" He went
on, stung by that quiet marshalling of all her forces against him:

"Unhappily, the fate we cho