. He longed to know if by any happy chance it was his room,
for ever after to be filled with her wonder; but he didn't dare. He
would find that out later from some one else--Francesca, anybody.

"Then I shan't see you again till dinner?"

"Dinner is at eight," was Scrap's evasive answer as she went
upstairs.

He watched her go.

She passed the Madonna, the portrait of Rose Arbuthnot, and the
dark-eyed figure he had thought so sweet seemed to turn pale, to
shrivel into insignificance as she passed.

She turned the bend of the stairs, and the setting sun, shining
through the west window a moment on her face, turned her to glory.

She disappeared, and the sun went out too, and the stairs were
dark and empty.

He listened till her footsteps were silent, trying to tell from
the sound of the shutting door which room she had gone into, then
wandered aimlessly away through the hall again, and found himself back
in the top garden.

Scrap from her window saw him there. She saw Lotty and Rose
sitting on the end parapet, where she would have liked to have been,
and she saw Mr. Wilkins buttonholing Briggs and evidently telling him
to story of the oleander tree in the middle of the garden.

Briggs was listening with a patience she thought rather nice,
seeing that it was his oleander and his own father's story. She knew
Mr. Wilkins was telling him the story by his gestures. Domenico had
told it her soon after her arrival, and he had also told Mrs. Fisher,
who had told Mr. Wilkins. Mrs. Fisher thought highly of this story,
and often spoke of it. It was about a cherrywood walking-stick.
Briggs's father had thrust this stick into the ground at that spot, and
said to Domenico's father, who was then the gardener, "Here we will
have an oleander." And Briggs's father left the stick in the ground as
a reminder to Domenico's father, and presently--how long afterwards
nobody remembered--the stick began to sprout, and it was an oleander.

There stood poor Mr. Briggs being told all about it, and
listening to the story he must have known from infancy with patience.

Probably he was thinking of something else. She was afraid he
was. How unfortunate, how extremely unfortunate, the determination
that seized people to get hold of and engulf other people. If only
they could be induced to stand more on their own feet. Why couldn't
Mr. Briggs be more like Lotty, who never wanted anything of anybody,
but was complete in herself a