re of me."

He laughed also at that. "My dear, forgive me for saying so, but you are
absurd--too absurd to be taken seriously, even if you are serious--which
I doubt."

"But I am," she asserted. "I am. I--I am nearly always serious."

Mordaunt turned his head and looked at her with that in his eyes which
she alone ever saw there, before which instinctively, almost fearfully,
she veiled her own.

"You--child!" he said again softly.

And this time--perhaps because the words offered a way of escape of which
she was not sorry to avail herself--Chris did not seek to contradict him.
She pressed her cheek to Cinders' alert head, and said no more.

CHAPTER VII

THE SECOND WARNING

Rupert's description of Kellerton Old Park, though unflattering, was not
far removed from the truth. The thistles in the drive that wound from the
deserted lodge to the house itself certainly were abnormally high, so
high that Mordaunt at once decided to abandon the car inside the great
wrought-iron gates that had been the pride of the place for many years.

"That nice little donkey of yours would come in useful here," he
observed, as he handed his _fiancee_ to the ground.

She tucked her hand engagingly inside his arm. "Ah! but isn't the park
lovely? And look at all those rabbits! No, no, Cinders! You mustn't!
Trevor, you do like it?"

"I like it immensely," he answered.

His eyes looked out over the wide, rough stretch of ground before him
that was more like common land than private property, dwelt upon a belt
of trees that crowned a distant rise, scanned the overgrown carriage-road
to where it ended before a grey turret that was half-hidden by a great
cedar, finally came back to the sparkling face by his side.

"So this is to be our--home, Chris?" he said.

"Isn't it beautiful?" she said proudly. "Oh, Trevor, you don't know what
it means to me to feel it isn't going to be sold after all."

He smiled. "I understood it was going to be sold and presented to my wife
for a wedding-gift."

She turned her face up to his. "Trevor, you don't think I'm ungrateful
too, do you?"

"My darling," he said, "I think that gratitude between you and me is out
of place at any time. Remember, though I give you this and a thousand
other things, you are giving me--all you have."

She pressed his arm shyly. "It doesn't seem very much, does it?" she
said.

He laid his hand upon hers. "You can make it much," he said very gently.

"How, Trevo