.

"What?"

She looked up at him demurely.

"Why, you don't mind, do you, Douglas? Mr. Drexley is a friend of
yours, isn't he? He has been so kind."

"The devil he has!" Douglas muttered, amazed. "And how many more times
have you seen him during the fortnight, I wonder?"

"Well--once or twice," she admitted.

"Any more dinner parties?"

"We went to Richmond one afternoon. Mr. Drexley rows so nicely. He
introduced me to his sister."

"Never knew he had one," Douglas muttered.

"Here we are. Come in and sit down while I change."

Douglas was not long over his toilet. When he returned he was inclined
to be thoughtful. For no earthly reason he could think of, Cissy's
friendship with Drexley irritated him. He did not understand it. He
had looked upon Drexley as a man whose emancipation was an
impossibility, for whom there was no hope of any further social life.
Was it possible that he could be seriously attracted by Cicely? He
watched her with this thought all through luncheon, and gradually there
crept into his mind a fuller and more complete appreciation of her
unmistakable charm. All the time she was chattering gaily to him,
chasing away his gloom, forcing him to breathe the atmosphere of gaiety
and light-heartedness which she seemed at once to create and to revel
in. It occurred to him that if ever a girl in the world was created to
save a man from despair, surely she was that one. Dainty, cheerful,
unselfish, with a charming command of language and a piquant wit, Cicely
had made vast strides in self-development since the days when they had
sat together on the Feldwick Hills and talked of that future into which
it seemed then so impossible that they should ever pass.

"Do you remember," he asked her, "what we used to call the pearl light,
the soft crystalline glow before the sunrise, and how fresh and sweet
the air was when we scrambled up the hill?"

She nodded thoughtfully.

"I think very often of those days, and the dreams we used to weave
together. Sometimes I can scarcely believe how near we have come to
realising them. What a wonderfully still, lonely country it was."

"We used to sit and watch the smoke curl upwards from the cottages one
by one. The farm was always the first."

"Yes, Joan saw to that."

"And the nights. Do you remember how sweet the perfumes were--the
heather and the wild thyme? Those long cool nights, Cissy, when we
watched the lights flicker out one by one, and the corncrake