daughter.

"And he has made us late for tea. What a stupid fellow!"

It was exactly five minutes past five when they reached St. James's
Square. The sun, a globe, set in thin lines of yellow light, shone out
above the trees, which were dull but not yet leafless. Grey and
sulphurous and gold-edged clouds floated in masses on the blue sky. It
had been a day of changes--yet it seemed to Sara, whose own moods had
been as various, the ordinary passing away of time.

"Upon my word," said his lordship, "it is too bad! They may say what
they please about Reckage, but I call him a spooney. That horse was a
noble horse--a most superior horse. He couldn't manage him. I wish he
would sell him."

"He would never do anything so much to his own advantage," was the dry
response. "Poor Reckage is a brilliant fool--he's selfish, and therefore
he miscalculates."

Sara was now talking mechanically--as she often did when she was with
those whom she loved or liked, but from whom she was separated in every
thought, interest, and emotion. The lassitude of which she had
complained at the beginning of their drive returned upon her. Sighing
heavily, she entered the house and mounted the long staircase to the
drawing-room, where the tea-table was already spread, the flame
quivering under the kettle, the deep pink china laid out on a silver
tray. But the homeliness of the scene and its familiarity had no power
to soothe that aching, distracted heart. Had she been a man, she
thought, she might have sought her refuge in ceaseless work, in great
ambitions, in achievements. This eternal tea-pouring and word-mincing,
this business of forced laughter and garlanded conversation was more
than she could endure. A low cry of impatience, too long and also too
loosely imprisoned, escaped from her lips.

"What is the matter?" asked Lord Garrow, who was following close upon
her heels.

"Life," she said, "life! That is all that ever does matter."

"Ain't you happy?"

"No, but I have it in me to be happy--an appalling capability. Let us
say no more about it. I must join myself to eternity, and so find rest."

"Well," said her father, who now felt that he had a right to complain,
"my poor uncle used to say, if women deserved happiness they would bear
it better. Few of them bear it well--and this is a fact I have often
brought before me."

CHAPTER II

When Sara had prepared Lord Garrow's tea and cut the leaves of the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_,