m on occasions, and there was no doubt
that in the minds both of her family and of Jim's the expectation of an
eventual marriage had never altogether subsided. Nor, strangely enough,
had it altogether subsided in hers, although if she had ever asked
herself the question as to whether she was in love with Jim in the
slightest degree she would have answered it forcibly in the negative.
But--there it was, as it is with every young girl--some day she would be
married; and it might happen that she would be married to Jim.

"Do you remember," Jim asked her when they had walked the length of the
lake and come out in front of the Temple, "how you used to try to teach
me to draw here?"

Yes, it was obviously Jim's intention to open up a buried subject, and
she was not by any means prepared for that. The sketching lessons had
been a shameless subterfuge for obtaining privacy, for Jim had about as
much aptitude for the arts as a dromedary, and his libels on the lake
and the rhododendrons would have made old Merchant Jack and his
landscape gardener turn in their graves.

Cicely laughed. "Have you brought back any sketches from your travels?"
she asked.

"No. I've got lots of photographs, though." Jim was always literal.

"Angela and Beatrice paint beautifully," Cicely said. "We are going to
make sketches at Blackborough this afternoon. Will you come with us,
Jim? We are all going."

"Yes, I'll come," said Jim. "Cicely, are you glad to see me home again?"

"Yes, of course, I'm glad. We have all missed you awfully, Jim."

"You can't think how bucked up I am to think that I need never leave
Mountfield again as long as I live. That's what's so jolly about having
a place of your own. It's part of you. You feel that, don't you,
Cicely?"

"Well, as I haven't got a place of my own, Jim, I don't know that I do."

"When those beastly death duties are paid off," Jim began, but Cicely
would not let him finish. "Anyhow," she said, "I should hate to think I
was going to stay in one place all my life, however much I liked it. Of
course, it is natural that you should feel as you do when you have been
travelling for a year. If I ever have the chance of travelling for a
year perhaps I shall feel like that about Kencote." She laughed and
looked him in the face, blushing a little. "Let us go back and play
tennis," she said.

His face fell, and he walked by her side without speaking. Cicely little
knew how keen was his disappointment. This