lock beside her.

"You will forgive my speaking to you, Miss Cardinal. I saw you at our
Chapel this morning."

His great height towered above her short clumsy figure; he seemed to
peer down at her from above his snowy beard as though he were the
inhabitant of some other world. His voice was of an extreme kindliness
and his eyes, when she looked up at him, shone with friendliness. She
found herself, to her own surprise, talking to him with great ease. He
was perfectly simple, human and unaffected. He asked her about her
country.

"I spend my days in longing to get back to my own place--and perhaps I
shall never see it again. I was born in Wiltshire--Salisbury Plain. My
great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, they all were ministers
of our Chapel there before me. They had no thought in their day of
London. I have always missed that space, the quiet. I shall always miss
it. Towns are not friendly to me."

She told him about St. Dreots, a little about her father.

"Ah, you're lucky!" he said. "You'll return many times before you
die--and you'll find no change there. Those places do not change as
towns do."

They were standing apart from the others near the window. He suddenly
put his hand on her arm, smiling at her.

"My dear," he said. "You don't mind me saying 'My dear,' but an old man
has his privileges--will you come and see us whenever you care to? My
wife will be so glad. I know that at first one can be lonely in this
great place. Just come in when you please."

He took her hand for a moment and then turned back to Aunt Anne, who
was now pouring out tea at a little table by the fire.

Martin Warlock, as his father moved away, came across to her, She had
known that he would do that as though something had been arranged
between them. When he came to her, however, he stood there before her
and had nothing to say. She also had nothing to say. His eyes searched
her face, then he broke out abruptly.

"Are you better?"

"I'm all right," she answered him brusquely. "Please don't say anything
about yesterday. It was an idiotic thing to do."

"That's what I came about to-day--to see how you were," he answered
her, his eyes laughing at her. "I should never have dreamed of coming
otherwise, you know. I saw you in chapel this morning so I guessed you
were all right, but it seemed such bad luck fainting right off the
minute you got here."

"I've never fainted in my life before," she answered.

"No, you don'