lway journey for a week or two."

VII

Melrose had gone to Carlisle. The Cumbria landscape lay in a misty
sunshine, the woods and fields steaming after a night of soaking rain.
All the shades of early summer were melting into each other; reaches of
the river gave back a silvery sky, while under the trees the shadows
slept. The mountains were indistinct, drawn in pale blues and purples, on
a background of lilac and pearl. And all the vales "were up," drinking
in the streams that poured from the heights.

Tatham and his mother were walking through the park together. He was in
riding-dress, and his horse awaited him at the Keswick gate. Lady Tatham
beside him was attired as usual in the plainest and oldest of clothes.
Her new gowns, which she ordered from time to time mechanically, leaving
the whole designing of them to her dress-maker, served her at Duddon, in
her own phrase, mainly "for my maid to show the housekeeper." They lay in
scented drawers, daintily folded in tissue paper, and a maid no less
ambitious than her fellows for a well-dressed mistress kept mournful
watch over them. This carelessness of dress had grown upon Victoria
Tatham with years. In her youth the indulgence of a taste for beautiful
and artistic clothes had taken up a great deal of her time. Then suddenly
it had all become indifferent to her. Devotion to her boy, books, and
natural history absorbed a mind more and more impatient of ordinary
conventions.

"You are quite sure that Melrose will be out of the way?" she asked her
son as they entered on the last stretch of their walk.

"Well, you saw the letter."

"No--give it me."

He handed it. She read it through attentively.

"Mr. Melrose asks me to say that he will not be here. He is going over to
the neighbourhood of Carlisle on business, and cannot be home till ten
o'clock at night."

"He has the decency not to 'regret,'" said Lady Tatham.

"No. It is awkward of course going at all"--Tatham's brow was a little
furrowed--"but I somehow think I ought to go."

"Oh, go," said his mother. "If he does play a trick you will know how
to meet it. It would be very like him to play some trick," she added,
thoughtfully.

"Mother," said Tatham impetuously, "was Melrose ever in love with you?"

He coloured boyishly as he spoke. Lady Tatham looked up startled; a faint
red appeared in her cheeks also.

"I believe he supposed himself to be. I knew him very well, and I
might--possibly--have