t, unassuming
lovers.

"And so long as Sir Thomas has not tried--and found out--Lady Jane will
be made unhappy?"

"If he were to let you escape without trying, he would not be forgiven.
His grandmother has had her own way all her life."

"But suppose after I went away someone else came?"

Mary shook her head.

"People like you don't HAPPEN in one neighbourhood twice in a lifetime.
I am twenty-six and you are the first I have seen."

"And he will only be safe if?"

Mary Lithcom nodded.

"Yes--IF," she answered. "It's silly--and frightful--but it is true."

Miss Vanderpoel looked down on the grass a few moments, and then seemed
to arrive at a decision.

"He likes you? You can make him understand things?" she inquired.

"Yes."

"Then go and tell him that if he will come here and ask me a direct
question, I will give him a direct answer--which will satisfy Lady
Alanby."

Lady Mary caught her breath.

"Do you know, you are the most wonderful girl I ever saw!" she
exclaimed. "But if you only knew what I feel about Janie!" And tears
rushed into her eyes.

"I feel just the same thing about my sister," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I
think Rosy and Lady Jane are rather alike."

. . . . .

When Tommy tramped across the grass towards her he was turning red and
white by turns, and looking somewhat like a young man who was being
marched up to a cannon's mouth. It struck him that it was an American
kind of thing he was called upon to do, and he was not an American, but
British from the top of his closely-cropped head to the rather thick
soles of his boots. He was, in truth, overwhelmed by his sense of his
inadequacy to the demands of the brilliantly conceived, but unheard-of
situation. Joy and terror swept over his being in waves.

The tall, proud, wood-nymph look of her as she stood under a tree,
waiting for him, would have struck his courage dead on the spot and
caused him to turn and flee in anguish, if she had not made a little
move towards him, with a heavenly, every-day humanness in her eyes. The
way she managed it was an amazing thing. He could never have managed it
at all himself.

She came forward and gave him her hand, and really it was HER hand which
held his own comparatively steady.

"It is for Lady Jane," she said. "That prevents it from being ridiculous
or improper. It is for Lady Jane. Her eyes," with a soft-touched laugh,
"are the colour of the blue speedwell I showed you. It is the colour of