er face went slowly white.

She turned and looked at Mr. Wilkins as if trying to remember
him.

"Oh no. On the contrary--"

She managed to smile. "I'm going to have a visitor," she said,
holding out the telegram; and when he had taken it she walked away
towards the dining-room, murmuring something about lunch being ready.

Mr. Wilkins read the telegram. It had been sent that morning
from Mezzago, and was:

Am passing through on way to Rome. May I pay my respects this
afternoon?

Thomas Briggs.

Why should such a telegram make the interesting lady turn pale?
For her pallor on reading it had been so striking as to convince Mr.
Wilkins she was receiving a blow.

"Who is Thomas Briggs?" he asked, following her into the dining-room.

She looked at him vaguely. "Who is--?" she repeated, getting her
thoughts together again.

"Thomas Briggs."

"Oh. Yes. He is the owner. This is his house. He is very nice.
He is coming this afternoon."

Thomas Briggs was at that very moment coming. He was jogging
along the road between Mezzago and Castagneto in a fly, sincerely
hoping that the dark-eyed lady would grasp that all he wanted was to
see her, and not at all to see if his house were still there. He felt
that an owner of delicacy did not intrude on a tenant. But--he had
been thinking so much of her since that day. Rose Arbuthnot. Such a
pretty name. And such a pretty creature--mild, milky, mothery in the
best sense; the best sense being that she wasn't his mother and
couldn't have been if she had tried, for parents were the only things
impossible to have younger than oneself. Also, he was passing so near.
It seemed absurd not just to look in and see if she were comfortable.
He longed to see her in his house. He longed to see it as her
background, to see her sitting in his chairs, drinking out of his cups,
using all his things. Did she put the big crimson brocade cushion in
the drawing-room behind her little dark head? Her hair and the
whiteness of her skin would look lovely against it. Had she seen the
portrait of herself on the stairs? He wondered if she liked it. He
would explain it to her. If she didn't paint, and she had said nothing
to suggest it, she wouldn't perhaps notice how exactly the moulding of
the eyebrows and the slight hollow of the cheek--

He told the fly to wait in Castagneto, and crossed the piazza,
hailed by children and dogs, who all knew him and sprang up suddenly
from n