ch like to
see it."

Mrs. Honeybone debated with herself for a moment, until at last with a
grunt of disapproval she came downstairs and opened the front door. The
lily pool, now a lily pool only in name, for it was covered with an
integument of duckweed which in twilight took on the texture of velvet,
was an attractive place set in an enclosure of grass between high grey
walls.

"That's all there is to see," said Mrs. Honeybone.

"Mr. Starling is abroad?" Esther asked.

The housekeeper nodded.

"And when is he coming back?" she went on.

"That's for him to say," said the housekeeper disagreeably. "He might
come back to-night for all I know."

Almost before the sentence was out of her mouth the hall bell jangled,
and a distant voice shouted:

"Nanny, Nanny, hurry up and open the door!"

Mrs. Honeybone could not have looked more startled if the voice had been
that of a ghost. Mark began to talk of going until Esther cut him short.

"I don't think Mr. Starling will mind our being here so much as that,"
she said.

Mrs. Honeybone had already hurried off to greet her master; and when she
was gone Mark looked at Esther, saw that her face was strangely flushed,
and in an instant of divination apprehended either that she had already
met the squire of Rushbrooke Grange or that she expected to meet him
here to-night; so that, when presently a tall man of about thirty-five
with brick-dust cheeks came into the close, he was not taken aback when
Esther greeted him by name with the assurance of old friendship. Nor was
he astonished that even in the wan light those brick-dust cheeks should
deepen to terra-cotta, those hard blue eyes glitter with recognition,
and the small thin-lipped mouth lose for a moment its immobility and
gape, yes, gape, in the amazement of meeting somebody whom he never
could have expected to meet at such an hour in such a place.

"You," he exclaimed. "You here!"

By the way he quickly looked behind him as if to intercept a prying
glance Mark knew that, whatever the relationship between Esther and the
squire had been in the past, it had been a relationship in which
secrecy had played a part. In that moment between him and Will Starling
there was enmity.

"You couldn't have expected him to make a great fuss about a boy," said
Esther brutally on their way back to the Rectory.

"I suppose you think that's the reason why I don't like him," said Mark.
"I don't want him to take any notice of me, bu