vases.

"It is beautiful to come back to the country," she said. "When I get
into the carriage at the station and drive through the sweet air, I
always feel as if I were beginning to live again, and as if in London I
had not been quite alive. It seemed so _heavenly_ in the rose garden at
Palstrey to-day, to walk about among those thousands of blooming lovely
things breathing scent and nodding their heavy, darling heads."

"The roads are in a beautiful condition for riding," Hester said, "and
Alec says that Faustine is perfect. You ought to begin to-morrow
morning. Shall you?"

She spoke the words somewhat slowly, and her face did not look happy.
But, then, it never was a really happy face. The days of her youth had
been too full of the ironies of disappointment.

There was a second's silence, and then she said again:

"Shall you, if it continues fine?"

Emily's hands were full of roses, both hands, and Hester saw both hands
and roses tremble. She turned round slowly and came towards her. She
looked nervous, awkward, abashed, and as if for that moment she was a
big girl of sixteen appealing to her and overwhelmed with queer
feelings, and yet the depths of her eyes held a kind of trembling,
ecstatic light. She came and stood before her, holding the trembling
roses as if she had been called up for confession.

"I--I mustn't," she half whispered. The corners of her lips drooped and
quivered, and her voice was so low that Hester could scarcely hear it.
But she started and half sat up.

"You _mustn't_?" she gasped; yes, really it was gasped.

Emily's hand trembled so that the roses began to fall one by one,
scattering a rain of petals as they dropped.

"I mustn't," she repeated, low and shakily. "I had--reason.--I went to
town to see--somebody. I saw Sir Samuel Brent, and he told me I must
not. He is quite sure."

She tried to calm herself and smile. But the smile quivered and ended in
a pathetic contortion of her face. In the hope of gaining decent
self-control, she bent down to pick up the dropped roses. Before she had
picked up two, she let all the rest fall, and sank kneeling among them,
her face in her hands.

"Oh, Hester, Hester!" she panted, with sweet, stupid unconciousness of
the other woman's heaving chest and glaring eyes. "It has come to me
too, actually, after all."

Chapter Fifteen

The Palstrey Manor carriage had just rolled away carrying Lady
Walderhurst home. The big, low-ceilinged,