ox."

"And you, Cicely, bought my pagoda," said Gwendolen.

"Your pagoda?" Mrs. Waterlow questioned, her eyes, that seemed to open
with a little difficulty, resting on her hostess with some surprise.
"Was the pagoda yours?"

"Yes, mine," said Gwendolen. "It came in a box of rubbish,--you saw the
kind of rubbish,--a legacy from an old aunt, and I bundled it off to
Glazebrook. Owen says it is really good. Is it?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Mrs. Waterlow.

"I'm sure it is," said Owen, "and I liked the accuracy with which you
fell in love with it at first sight."

"I did fall in love with it, good or bad," said Mrs. Waterlow. "Don't
tell me that you want it back again, Gwendolen. But if it was a mistake,
of course----"

He recognised in her the note of guilelessness and, with some decision,
for he actually perceived an eagerness in Gwendolen's glance, interposed
with, "But Gwendolen thinks it gimcrackery, and wouldn't have it at any
price. Isn't it so, Gwendolen?"

Poor Gwendolen was looking a little glum; but she was the most
unresentful of creatures.

"Indeed, it is," she said. "I did think it gimcrackery; but, to tell the
truth, I never really saw it at all. I can't believe you'd have seen it,
Cicely, standing on its worsted mat in my Aunt Pickthorne's
drawing-room. But I wouldn't dream, of course, of taking it back; and if
it's really good, I'm more glad than I can say that my loss should be
your gain. Now, won't you and Owen sit down here and listen to my
wonderful Perceval Dawkins? Oh, he is going to astonish the world some
day."

Mrs. Waterlow and Owen, in the intervals of the ensuing music, talked
together. Seen more closely, he found that her face, though not
beautiful, was even more singularly delightful than he had thought it.
She had eyes merry, yet tired, like those of a sleepy child, and sweet,
small, firm lips and a glance and smile at once very frank and very
remote. There was about her none of that aroma of sorrow that some
women distil from the tragedies of their lives, and wear, even if
unconsciously, like an allurement. He felt that in Mrs. Waterlow sorrow
had been an isolating, a bewildering, a devastating experience, making
her at once more ready to take refuge in the trivialities of life and
more unable to admit an intimacy into the essentials. Yet the spring of
vitality and mirth was so strong in her that in all she said he felt a
quality restorative, aromatic, fragrant, as if he wer