hen at length he rose and irritably
rang the bell.

"See if you can find Master Piers!" he said to David. "He can't be far
away. Look in the drawing-room! Look in the garden! Tell him I want him!"

David withdrew upon the errand, and again the oppressive silence drew
close. For a long interval Sir Beverley sat quite motionless, still
staring at the door as though he expected Piers to enter at any moment.
But when at length it opened, it was only to admit David once more.

"I'm sorry to say I can't find Master Piers anywhere in the house or
garden, Sir Beverley," he said, looking straight before him and blinking
vacantly at the lamp. "I'm inclined to believe, sir, that he must have
gone into the park."

Sir Beverley snarled inarticulately and dismissed him.

During the hour that followed, he did not move from his chair, and
scarcely changed his position. But at last, as the stable-clock was
tolling eleven, he rose stiffly and walked to the window. It was
fastened; he dragged at the catch with impatient fingers.

His face was haggard and grey as he finally thrust up the sash, and
leaned out with his hands on the sill.

The night was very still all about him. It might have been a night in
June. Only very far away a faint breeze was stirring, whispering
furtively in the bare boughs of the elm trees that bordered the park.
Overhead the stars shone dimly behind a floating veil of mist, and
from the garden sleeping at his feet there arose a faint, fugitive
scent of violets.

The old man's face contracted as at some sudden sense of pain as that
scent reached his nostrils. His mouth twitched with a curious tremor,
and he covered it with his hand as though he feared some silent
watcher in that sleeping world might see and mock his weakness. That
violet-bed beneath the window had been planted fifty years before at
the whim of a woman.

"We must have a great many violets," she had said. "They are sweeter than
all the roses in the world. Next year I must have handfuls and handfuls
of sweetness."

And the next year the violets had bloomed in the chosen corner, but her
hands had not gathered them. And they had offered their magic ever since,
year after year--even as they offered it tonight--to a heart that was too
old and too broken to care.

Fifty years before, Sir Beverley had stood at that same window waiting
and listening in the spring twilight for the beloved footfall of the
woman who was never again to enter his ho