d do for its inspection.

"Miss Wycliffe," he ended, "your interest has betrayed me into making a
bore of myself."

"On the contrary," she returned, "I shall take the very first
opportunity of going out to California. I shall be ashamed to go to
Switzerland again without the Sierras as a background of comparison.
And in the mean time I intend to begin the study of astronomy. I
thought it would be jolly to bring up a party some evening to look
through the telescope."

"By all means!" he cried.

"I have yet to see the day," said Cardington, "when Miss Felicity will
do me the honour of begging the loan of a Latin grammar."

"I call that ungrateful," she returned. "Did n't I tramp all over the
Roman Forum with you one boiling afternoon, while you explained that we
had n't strayed into a stone quarry, as I had supposed?"

"So you did," he admitted. "That was a pleasant little archaeological
_giro_, and you showed yourself upon that occasion to be an audience of
great endurance."

This was only one indication Leigh had received of mutual experiences
and interests between the two, yet, bewitched though he was, the
discovery aroused no uneasiness within him. It was not only that he
mentally exaggerated his colleague's age. His source of comfort was
deeper, and lay in Miss Wycliffe's attitude of comradeship toward her
old friend. It seemed that such an attitude must preclude romance, at
least on her part. No man situated as he was could have avoided the
speculation that now absorbed him in regard to the possible rivalry of
another. In the end he decided that Cardington's gaze, when it
lingered upon his hostess, betrayed reminiscence rather than hope.

It chanced that the dinner was followed by a wedding, one of those
forlorn ceremonies sometimes performed in the houses of the clergy
between those who seem to have no kin or friends or home of their own.
The bishop summoned his guests as witnesses, and as Leigh took the seat
which Miss Wycliffe made for him beside her, he was struck by the
impression which this not unusual incident appeared to make upon her
mind. She sat with her chin resting upon the palm of her hand, in
absorbed, almost pained, contemplation, as if the actual scene were
merely the starting-point of a long journey of the imagination.

In fact, there was nothing intrinsically interesting in the couple
before them. They possessed not even the picturesqueness of speech and
costume which belongs