er room, she said. Some new books had arrived from
London this morning, and she would look over them. She talked a little
about her visits before she went, and when, as she talked, Ughtred came
over to her and stood close to her side holding her hand and stroking
it, she smiled at him sweetly--the smile he adored. He stroked the hand
and softly patted it, watching her wistfully. Suddenly he lifted it to
his lips, and kissed it again and again with a sort of passion.

"I love you so much, Aunt Betty," he cried. "We both love you so much.
Something makes me love you to-day more than ever I did before. It
almost makes me cry. I love you so."

She stooped swiftly and drew him into her arms and kissed him close and
hard. He held his head back a little and looked into the blue under her
lashes.

"I love your eyes," he said. "Anyone would love your eyes, Aunt Betty.
But what is the matter with them? You are not crying at all, but--oh!
what is the matter?"

"No, I am not crying at all," she said, and smiled--almost laughed.

But after she had kissed him again she took her books and went upstairs.

She did not lie down, and she did not read when she was alone in her
room. She drew a long chair before the window and watched the slow
falling of the rain. There is nothing like it--that slow weeping of the
rain on an English autumn day. Soft and light though it was, the park
began to look sodden. The bare trees held out their branches like
imploring arms, the brown garden beds were neat and bare. The same rain
was drip-dripping at Mount Dunstan--upon the desolate great house--upon
the village--upon the mounds and ancient stone tombs in the churchyard,
sinking into the earth--sinking deep, sucked in by the clay beneath--the
cold damp clay. She shook herself shudderingly. Why should the thought
come to her--the cold damp clay? She would not listen to it, she would
think of New York, of its roaring streets and crash of sound, of the
rush of fierce life there--of her father and mother. She tried to force
herself to call up pictures of Broadway, swarming with crowds of black
things, which, seen from the windows of its monstrous buildings,
seemed like swarms of ants, burst out of ant-hills, out of a thousand
ant-hills. She tried to remember shop windows, the things in them, the
throngs going by, and the throngs passing in and out of great, swinging
glass doors. She dragged up before her a vision of Rosalie, driving
with her mother a