ked
his ears.

"I think he's perfectly delightful," she said. "I'm afraid I prefer
mongrels to better dogs."

"Do you really?" said Roddy, looking kindly at her. "'Pon my word, Miss
Rand, I must show you my little lot. I don't think you'll have much use
for that animal there afterwards."

At last the girl in the riding-habit and the other woman and the young
man noisily departed.

Rachel took Lizzie upstairs. "Are you sure," she said, "you'd like to
come down to dinner? Wouldn't you rather, to-night, go early to bed and
have it there?"

"No, thank you, Lady Seddon." Lizzie looked about the room. "This is all
splendid, thank you. I'm not a bit tired."

"I'm so glad you've come," said Rachel, searching for Lizzie's eyes. But
Lizzie had turned away.

At last she was alone.

Her room was splendid--so wide, and high, and such a fire!

She flung up her window. There the Downs were, black, huge before her;
the rain came down hissing from the sky and a smell of wet earth and
grass stole up to her.

"That's the woman ..." she said again to herself--"What shall we say to
one another?"

Then as she stared into the fire she thought, "She wants me to help
her."

Afterwards she heard a scratching at the door. A maid had been sent to
her, but she had dismissed her, saying that she would manage for
herself.

She went to the door and found outside it the shaggy, square dog.

He walked into her room, sniffed for a time at the bed, pricked up his
ears at the noise that the fire made, listened to the sound of the rain,
at last sat down in a distant corner with one leg stretched at right
angles to his body and watched her.

She was indignant with herself for the softness in her heart that his
company brought to her.

CHAPTER XI

RODDY IS MASTER

"I and my mistress, side by side,
Shall be together, breathe and ride,
So, one day more am I deified,
Who knows but the world may end to-night?"

ROBERT BROWNING.

I

Introspection had been always to Roddy a thing unknown. He had never
regarded himself as in any way different from the other men whom he met,
and he would have been greatly distressed had he thought that he _was_
different.--"What you writin' fellers," he had once said to Garden, "can
find amusin' in inventin' people for I can't think; you've got to make
'em odd for people to be interested in 'em and then they aren't like
anyone."

Now, however, for the first time in