the woods far away.

"If all estates were like this estate!" cried Lydia, pointing to them,
"and all cottages like their cottages!"

Faversham flushed and stiffened.

"Oh! the Tathams are always perfection!"

Lydia's eyebrows lifted.

"It is a crime?"

"No--but one hears too much of it."

"Not from them!" The tone was indignant.

"I daresay."

Suddenly, he threw her a look which startled her. She descended from her
pony-cart at the steps of the castle, her breath fluttering a little.
What had happened?

"Her ladyship is in the garden," said the footman who received them. And
he led the way through a door in the wall of the side court. They
followed--in a constrained silence. Lydia felt puzzled, and rather angry.

Faversham recovered himself.

"I apologize! They have all the virtues."

His voice was lowered--for her ear; there was deference in his smile. But
somehow Lydia was conscious of a note of stormy self-assertion in him,
which was new to her; something strong and stubborn, which refused to
take her lead as usual.

Lady Tatham advanced. The eyes of a group of people sitting in a circle
under the shade of a spreading yew tree turned toward them.

Boden, who had given Faversham a perfunctory greeting, fell back into his
chair again, and watched the new agent's reception with coolly smiling
eyes.

Tatham came hurrying up to greet them. No one but Lydia could have
distinguished any change in the boyish voice and look. But it was there.
She felt it.

He turned from her to Faversham.

"Awfully glad to see you. Hope you're quite fit again."

"Very nearly all right, thank you."

"Are you actually at work? Great excitement everywhere about you!"

Tatham stood, with his straw hat tilted toward the back of his head, and
his hands on his sides, observing his guest.

Faversham shrugged his shoulders.

"I feel horribly nervous!"

"Well you may!" laughed Tatham. "Never mind. We'll all back you up, if
you'll let us."

"As far as I am concerned--the smallest contributions thankfully
received. Who are these people here?"

Tatham introduced him.

Then to Lydia:

"Delorme is waiting for you." He carried her off.

By this time Mr. Andover, the old grizzled squire who had been Lydia's
partner at dinner the night before, had dropped in, and various other
residents from the neighbourhood. They gathered eagerly round Faversham,
in the deep shade of the yews.

And before long, the new man had produc