mentioning--that of Garth
Trent, and none of Elisabeth's quietly uttered comments or inquiries
sufficed to break through the guard of her reticence concerning the
Hermit of Far End.

"It sounds rather a manless Eden--except for the nice, lame Herrick
person," said Elisabeth at last, and her hyacinth eyes, with their
curiously veiled expression, rested consideringly on Sara's face, alight
with interest as she had vividly sketched the picture of her life at
Monkshaven.

"Yes, I suppose it is rather," she admitted. Her tone was carelessly
indifferent, but the eager light died suddenly out of her face, and
Elisabeth, smiling faintly, adroitly turned the conversation.

Sara speedily discovered that she would have even less time for the
fruitless occupation of remembering than she had anticipated. The
Durwards owned a host of friends in town with whom they were immensely
popular, and Sara found herself caught up in a perpetual whirl of
entertainment that left her but little leisure for brooding over the
past.

She felt sometimes as though the London season had opened and swallowed
her up, as the whale swallowed Jonah, and when she declared herself
breathless with so much rushing about, Tim would coolly throw over any
engagement that chanced to have been made and carry her off for a day
up the river, where a quiet little lunch, in the tranquil shade of
overhanging trees, and the cosy, intimate talk that was its invariable
concomitant, seemed like an oasis of familiar, homely pleasantness in
the midst of the gay turmoil of London in May.

Tim had developed amazingly. He seemed instinctively to recognize her
moods, adapting himself accordingly, and in his thought and care for
her there was a half-playful, half-tender element of possessiveness
that sometimes brought a smile to her lips--and sometimes a sigh, as the
inevitable comparison asserted itself between Tim's gentle ruling and
the brusque, forceful mastery that had been Garth's. But, on the whole,
the visit to the Durwards was productive of more smiles than sighs, and
Sara found Tim's young, chivalrous devotion very soothing to the wound
her pride had suffered at Garth's hands.

She overflowed in gratitude to Elisabeth.

"You're giving me a perfectly lovely time," she told her. "And Tim _is_
such a good playfellow!"

Elisabeth's face seemed suddenly to glow with that inner radiance which
praise of her beloved Tim alone was able to inspire.

"Only that, Sara?" s