here and there upon
it, lips just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped. She
looked content; surely it did her good to come and see him! The
selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on him, for he could still
feel pleasure in the pleasure of others, realising that what he wanted,
though much, was not quite all that mattered.

"It's quiet here," he said; "you mustn't come down if you find it dull.
But it's a pleasure to see you. My little sweet is the only face which
gives me any pleasure, except yours."

From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be appreciated,
and this reassured him. "That's not humbug," he said. "I never told a
woman I admired her when I didn't. In fact I don't know when I've told a
woman I admired her, except my wife in the old days; and wives are
funny." He was silent, but resumed abruptly:

"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and there we
were." Her face looked mysteriously troubled, and, afraid that he had
said something painful, he hurried on: "When my little sweet marries, I
hope she'll find someone who knows what women feel. I shan't be here to
see it, but there's too much topsy-turvydom in marriage; I don't want her
to pitch up against that." And, aware that he had made bad worse, he
added: "That dog will scratch."

A silence followed. Of what was she thinking, this pretty creature whose
life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet was made for love? Some
day when he was gone, perhaps, she would find another mate--not so
disorderly as that young fellow who had got himself run over. Ah! but
her husband?

"Does Soames never trouble you?" he asked.

She shook her head. Her face had closed up suddenly. For all her
softness there was something irreconcilable about her. And a glimpse of
light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies strayed into a brain
which, belonging to early Victorian civilisation--so much older than this
of his old age--had never thought about such primitive things.

"That's a comfort," he said. "You can see the Grand Stand to-day. Shall
we take a turn round?"

Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer walls peach
trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through the stables, the
vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds, the rosery, the
summer-house, he conducted her--even into the kitchen garden to see the
tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out o