were the tapestries even more beautiful that himself had woven. On the
tables were the books John Lambert had printed, which gave positively
the aspect of being treasures by the discretion of their external
appearance. In other rooms hung the original pictures of hackneyed
mezzotints; and how rare they looked now with their velvety pigments of
emerald and purple, of orange, cinnabar and scarlet glowing in the
tempered sunlight! Margaret, as she moved from room to room, seemed with
her weight of dusky hair and fastidious remoteness to belong to the
company of lovely women whose romances filled these splendid scenes; but
Pauline was life, irradiating with her joy each picture and giving to it
the complement of its own still beauty.

"Mrs. Lambert keeps very well, miss," said Charlotte, as they came out
again from the house. "But, of course, she doesn't get about much now.
Yet we can't really complain, especially with this fine weather."

"Would you like some more beer?" Mrs. Lambert asked, when they joined
her again in the yew parlor.

They said they were no longer thirsty; and, having thanked her for the
pleasures of the visit, they left her in the past, returning by the
pale-green path across the meadows to where the _Naiad_ lay by the old
bridge.

"Oh, I did want some tea," sighed Margaret.

"I love Mrs. Lambert," cried Pauline, dancing through the meads. "Wasn't
it touching of her to offer Margaret beer? Oh, Guy, when we're married
and when you die and I receive young poets at Plashers Mead, shall I
offer their future sisters-in-law home-brewed beer? Oh, but I'm sure I
shall forget to offer them anything."

Was there any reason, thought Guy, why Plashers Mead should not become a
second Ladingford Manor? Friends long ago took that house together;
perhaps Michael Fane would, after all, see the necessity of a second
Ladingford Manor and share Plashers Mead with himself and Pauline. After
this visit it was impossible to contemplate the prospect of being a
schoolmaster; it was impossible to imagine Pauline as a schoolmaster's
wife. At all costs their love must be sustained on the pinnacle of
romance where now it stood. Margaret would sympathize with his desire to
set Pauline in beauty; she, dreading the idea of marrying an Indian
engineer, would understand how impossible it was to make Pauline the
wife of a schoolmaster. Such a declaration must somehow be avoided. It
were better they should wait three years for marr