st the black; and the sun, penetrating the thin green of some
larches to her left, danced in her eyes and on a face full of sensitive
and beautiful expression.

They had not met since they stood together beside Hallin's grave. This
fact was in both their minds. Aldous felt it, as it were, in the touch
of her hand. What he could not know was, that she was thinking quite as
much of his letter to her mother and its phrases.

They stood talking a little in the sunshine. Then, as Frank was taking
his leave, Marcella said:

"Won't you wait for--for Lord Maxwell, in the old library? We can get at
it from the garden, and I have made it quite habitable. My mother, of
course, does not wish to see anybody."

Frank hesitated, then, pushed by a certain boyish curiosity, and by the
angry belief that Betty had been carried off by Miss Raeburn, and was
out of his reach till luncheon-time, said he would wait. Marcella led
the way, opened the garden-door of the lower corridor, close to the spot
where she had seen Wharton standing in the moonlight on a
never-to-be-forgotten night, and then ushered them into the library. The
beautiful old place had been decently repaired, though in no sense
modernised. The roof had no holes, and its delicate stucco-work,
formerly stained and defaced by damp, had been whitened, so that the
brown and golden tones of the books in the latticed cases told against
it with delightful effect. The floor was covered with a cheap matting,
and there were a few simple chairs and tables. A wood fire burnt on the
old hearth. Marcella's books and work lay about, and some shallow
earthenware pans filled with home-grown hyacinths scented the air. What
with the lovely architecture of the room itself, its size, its books
and old portraits, and the signs it bore of simple yet refined use, it
would have been difficult to find a gentler, mellower place. Aldous
looked round him with delight.

"I hope to make a village drawing-room of it in time," she said casually
to Frank as she stooped to put a log on the fire. "I think we shall get
them to come, as it has a separate door, and scraper, and mat all to
itself."

"Goodness!" said Frank, "they won't come. It's too far from the
village."

"Don't you be so sure," said Marcella, laughing. "Mr. Craven has all
sorts of ideas."

"Who's Mr. Craven?"

"Didn't you meet him at my rooms?"

"Oh! I remember," ejaculated the boy--"a frightful Socialist!"

"And his wife's worse," s