tings were reduced to a casual mutter. Driving
back to town, all three were silent. And in the patio the doctor, in a
more natural manner, said--

"I'll leave you now to yourselves. I'll call to-morrow if I may?"

"Come to lunch, dear Dr. Monygham, and come early," said Mrs. Gould, in
her travelling dress and her veil down, turning to look at him at the
foot of the stairs; while at the top of the flight the Madonna, in blue
robes and the Child on her arm, seemed to welcome her with an aspect of
pitying tenderness.

"Don't expect to find me at home," Charles Gould warned him. "I'll be
off early to the mine."

After lunch, Dona Emilia and the senor doctor came slowly through
the inner gateway of the patio. The large gardens of the Casa Gould,
surrounded by high walls, and the red-tile slopes of neighbouring roofs,
lay open before them, with masses of shade under the trees and level
surfaces of sunlight upon the lawns. A triple row of old orange trees
surrounded the whole. Barefooted, brown gardeners, in snowy white shirts
and wide calzoneras, dotted the grounds, squatting over flowerbeds,
passing between the trees, dragging slender India-rubber tubes across
the gravel of the paths; and the fine jets of water crossed each other
in graceful curves, sparkling in the sunshine with a slight pattering
noise upon the bushes, and an effect of showered diamonds upon the
grass.

Dona Emilia, holding up the train of a clear dress, walked by the side
of Dr. Monygham, in a longish black coat and severe black bow on
an immaculate shirtfront. Under a shady clump of trees, where stood
scattered little tables and wicker easy-chairs, Mrs. Gould sat down in a
low and ample seat.

"Don't go yet," she said to Dr. Monygham, who was unable to tear himself
away from the spot. His chin nestling within the points of his collar,
he devoured her stealthily with his eyes, which, luckily, were round and
hard like clouded marbles, and incapable of disclosing his sentiments.
His pitying emotion at the marks of time upon the face of that woman,
the air of frailty and weary fatigue that had settled upon the eyes and
temples of the "Never-tired Senora" (as Don Pepe years ago used to call
her with admiration), touched him almost to tears. "Don't go yet.
To-day is all my own," Mrs. Gould urged, gently. "We are not back yet
officially. No one will come. It's only to-morrow that the windows of
the Casa Gould are to be lit up for a reception."

The doc