s afraid you'd be upset and I wanted you to have this
quiet time when I was away...."

"You don't trust me any more," she said.

"Oh yes, I do, but I thought it would worry you. I know my money affairs
do worry you. But now I shall be all right. I'll come down here often,
you know, and, oh, really, dearest girl, it is better that I should be
in London. So don't be jealous, will you, and don't torment yourself
about my debts, will you, and don't think that you are anything but
everything to me."

"I expect you'll enjoy being in London," she said, slowly shredding the
flowers from a spray of wild mignonette.

"I hope I shall be so busy that I won't have time to regret Wychford,"
said Guy.

He had by now broken off all the rank flowers in reach, and the sour
stony ground was littered with seeds and pungent heads of bloom and
ragged stalks.

"You'll never regret Wychford," she said. "Never. Because I've spoiled
it for you, my darling."

She touched his hand gently and drew close to him, but only timidly; and
as she made the movement a flight of goldfinches lighted upon the
swaying thistle-down in the hollow of the waste land.

"Pauline! Pauline!" he cried, and would have kissed her passionately,
but she checked him:

"No, no, I just want to lean my head upon your shoulder for a little
while."

Above her murmur he heard the rustle of the goldfinches' song in parting
cadences upon the air, rising and falling; and looking down at Pauline
in the sunlight, he felt that she was a wounded bird he should be
cherishing.

AUGUST

The wedding of Richard and Margaret dreamed of for so long strung
Pauline to a pitch of excitement that made her seem never more
positively herself. She was conscious, as she gazed in the mirror on
that Lammas morning, that the tired look at the back of her eyes had
gone and that in her muslin dress sown with rosebuds she appeared
exactly as she ought to have appeared in any prefiguration of herself in
bridesmaid's attire. Feeling as she did in a way the principal architect
of Richard's and Margaret's happiness, she was determined at whatever
cost of dejection afterwards to bring to the completion of her design
all the enthusiasm she had brought to its conception.

"Do you like me as a bridesmaid?" she asked Guy.

And he, with obviously eager welcome of the old Pauline, could not find
enough words to say how much he liked her.

"Richard, of course, is wearing a tail-coat," she mu