a sou'west wind, the same warmth glowed
up in her the moment her eyes opened. Whether the lawn below were a
field of bright dew, or dry and darkish in a shiver of east wind, her
eyes never grew dim all day; and her blood felt as light as ostrich
feathers.

Stormed by an attack of his cacoethes scribendi, after those few blank
days at Becket, Felix saw nothing amiss with his young daughter. The
great observer was not observant of things that other people observed.
Neither he nor Flora, occupied with matters of more spiritual importance,
could tell, offhand, for example, on which hand a wedding-ring was worn.
They had talked enough of Becket and the Tods to produce the impression
on Flora's mind that one day or another two young people would arrive in
her house on a visit; but she had begun a poem called 'Dionysus at the
Well,' and Felix himself had plunged into a satiric allegory entitled
'The Last of the Laborers.' Nedda, therefore, walked alone; but at her
side went always an invisible companion. In that long, imaginary
walking-out she gave her thoughts and the whole of her heart, and to be
doing this never surprised her, who, before, had not given them whole to
anything. A bee knows the first summer day and clings intoxicated to its
flowers; so did Nedda know and cling. She wrote him two letters and he
wrote her one. It was not poetry; indeed, it was almost all concerned
with Wilmet Gaunt, asking Nedda to find a place in London where the girl
could go; but it ended with the words:

"Your lover,
"DEREK."

This letter troubled Nedda. She would have taken it at once to Felix or
to Flora if it had not been for the first words, "Dearest Nedda," and
those last three. Except her mother, she instinctively distrusted women
in such a matter as that of Wilmet Gaunt, feeling they would want to know
more than she could tell them, and not be too tolerant of what they
heard. Casting about, at a loss, she thought suddenly of Mr. Cuthcott.

At dinner that day she fished round carefully. Felix spoke of him almost
warmly. What Cuthcott could have been doing at Becket, of all places, he
could not imagine--the last sort of man one expected to see there; a good
fellow, rather desperate, perhaps, as men of his age were apt to get if
they had too many women, or no woman, about them.

Which, said Nedda, had Mr. Cuthcott?

Oh! None. How had he struck Nedda? And Felix looked at his little
daughter with a certain humble curi