says--you read a great deal."

The solemnity of the last words, the fixedness of the tragic look, were
not to be resisted. Marcella laughed out, and both ladies simultaneously
thought her extraordinarily radiant and handsome.

"How can he know? Why, I have hardly talked about books to him at all."

"Well! here he comes," said Lady Winterbourne, smiling suddenly; "so I
can ask him. But I am sure he did say so."

It was now Marcella's turn to colour. Aldous Raeburn crossed the room,
greeted Lady Winterbourne, and next moment she felt her hand in his.

"You did tell me, Aldous, didn't you," said Lady Winterbourne, "that
Miss Boyce was a great reader?"

The speaker had known Aldous Raeburn as a boy, and was, moreover, a sort
of cousin, which explained the Christian name.

Aldous smiled.

"I said I thought Miss Boyce was like you and me, and had a weakness
that way, Lady Winterbourne. But I won't be cross-examined!"

"I don't think I am a great reader," said Marcella, bluntly--"at least I
read a great deal, but I hardly ever read a book through. I haven't
patience."

"You want to get at everything so quickly?" said Miss Raeburn, looking
up sharply.

"I suppose so!" said Marcella. "There seems to be always a hundred
things tearing one different ways, and no time for any of them."

"Yes, when one is young one feels like that," said Lady Winterbourne,
sighing. "When one is old one accepts one's limitations. When I was
twenty I never thought that I should still be an ignorant and
discontented woman at nearly seventy."

"It is because you are so young still, Lady Winterbourne, that you feel
so," said Aldous, laughing at her, as one does at an old friend. "Why,
you are younger than any of us! I feel all brushed and stirred up--a boy
at school again--after I have been to see you!"

"Well, I don't know what you mean, I'm sure," said Lady Winterbourne,
sighing again. Then she looked at the pair beside her--at the alert
brightness in the man's strong and quiet face as he sat stooping
forward, with his hands upon his knees, hardly able to keep his eyes for
an instant from the dark apparition beside him--at the girl's evident
shyness and pride.

"My dear!" she said, turning suddenly to Miss Raeburn, "have you heard
what a monstrosity Alice has produced this last time in the way of a
baby? It was born with four teeth!"

Miss Raeburn's astonishment fitted the provocation, and the two old
friends fell into a gossip on t