ner all about the lovely English country-seat.

In the room where they now talked, wreaths of fog filled the corners
like spiders' dusty webs that poised and swung. The odor that stamps
England hung in the mist, furthermore permeated with the scent of a
bouquet at Mrs. Falconer's elbow and which at one moment of his visit
Jimmy recognized for a lot of roses sent by parcel post from the
Westboro' greeneries.

"Do you ever sew?" he asked her, and she admitted to a thimble which
persistently, with a suggestion of reproach, turned up every now and
then amongst her belongings; now falling out from a jewel box, then
stowed away in a handkerchief case, out of place and continually
reproachful: kept because it had been her mother's.

If he did not speak other than in a general way of the rather long
visit he had been making to the Duke of Westboro' in Glousceshire, he
did tell his friend all about The Dials and dwelt on the fascination
that the old place possessed. The Dials was, in point of fact, very
agreeably described to Mrs. Falconer, who looked it out on the map of
Glousceshire, and Bulstrode's purchase (for he had legally gone in for
it, the whole thing), was made to seem a very jewel of a property.

"It's as lovely as an old print," she said, "as good as a Turner.
You're a great artist along your lines, Jimmy. Don't have it rebuilt
by some more than designing architect in trouble, or landscape-gardened
by some inebriated Adam out of charity. Leave it beautifully alone."

"Oh, I will," he assured her. "It shall tumble away and crush away in
peace. You shall see it all, however," he assured, "for you really
will come down for Christmas? You see, poor old fellow, Westboro's
house is rather empty."

"Yes," nodded Mrs. Falconer.

"You see, every one else has gone back on him."

"Poor dear," sympathized the lady. "Of course we'll go down."

No matter to what extent he had thought of her, and it was pretty sure
to be a wide one, her beauty struck him every time afresh. There was
the fine exquisiteness of _fin de race_ in Mary Falconer. Her father
had been an Irishman born, and the type of his island's lovely women
was repeated in his daughter's blue eyes, the set of her head and her
arms; her taper and small-boned little wrists, her cool hands with the
slender fingers told of muscle and moulding and completed the
well-finished, well turned-out creature whose race it had taken
generations to perfect. These