loose
knickerbocker suit, just as he was when he had walked up that very
avenue to say his last good-bye. She remained for a moment tense,
passively awaiting co-ordination of her faculties. Then clear awake,
and sending scudding the dear ghosts of the past, she sat up, and
catching the indignant spaniel by the collar, looked with a queer,
sudden interest at the newcomer. He was young, extraordinarily
beautiful; but he staggered and reeled like a drunken man. The spaniel
barked his respectable disapproval. In his long life of eighteen months
he had seen many people, postmen and butcher boys and casual diggers in
kitchen gardens, whose apparent permit to exist in Drane's Court had
been an insoluble puzzle; but never had he seen so outrageous a
trespasser. With unparalleled moral courage he told him exactly what he
thought of him. But the trespasser did not hear. He kept on advancing.
Miss Winwood rose, disgusted, and drew herself up. The young man threw
out his hands towards her, tripped over the three-inch-high border of
grass, and fell in a sprawling heap at her feet.

He lay very still. Ursula Winwood looked down upon him. The shiny brown
spaniel took up a strategic position three yards away and growled, his
chin between his paws. But the more Miss Winwood looked, and her blue
eyes were trained to penetrate, the more was she convinced that both
she and the dog were wrong in their diagnosis. The young man's face was
deadly white, his cheeks gaunt. It was evidently a grave matter. For a
moment or so she had a qualm of fear lest he might be dead. She bent
down, took him in her capable grip and composed his inert body
decently, and placed the knapsack he was wearing beneath his head. The
faintly beating heart proved him to be alive, but her touch on his brow
discovered fever. Kneeling by his side, she wiped his lips with her
handkerchief, and gave herself up to the fraction of a minute's
contemplation of the most beautiful youth she had ever seen. So there
he lay, a new Endymion, while the most modern of Dianas hung over him,
stricken with great wonderment at his perfection.

In this romantic attitude was she surprised, first by the coachman of
the landau and pair as he swung round the bend of the drive, and then
by the Archdeacon, who leaned over the door of the carriage. Miss
Winwood sprang to her feet; the coachman pulled up, and the Archdeacon
alighted.

"My dear Uncle Edward"--she wrung his hand--"I'm so glad to s