him.

Now he leaned on the low wall, and gazed at the shining reaches of the
river. "What a day!" he said to himself again. "What a divine
afternoon"; then he added quite simply, "I wish I were in love;
everyone under eighty ought to be, on such a day!"

Even at the age of thirty most men of any personal attractions have
some romantic memories. Lavendar had his share, but somehow that
morning he was disconcertingly candid to himself. It may have been the
sudden change from London air and London noise; something in the clear
transparency of the April day, in the flute-like melody of the birds'
song, in the dream-like beauty of the scene before him, that made all
the moth and rust that had consumed the remembrances of the past more
apparent. There was little of the treasure of heaven there,--it had
mostly been nonsense or vanity or worse. He wanted, oh, how he wanted,
to be able just for once to surrender himself to what was absolutely
ideal; to have a memory when he was an old man, of something that had
no fault in it.

"No, I've never been really in love," he said to himself, "I may as
well confess it; and I daresay I never shall be, but marry on an
impulse like most men, make the best of it afterwards, and have a
sort of middle-class happiness in the end of the day."

"One, Two, Three," said the church clock from the ancient tower,
booming out the note, and Lavendar started, and rubbed his hands
across his dazzled eyes. "Luncheon is a late meal in that awful house,
if I remember," he said, "but it must be over by this time. I really
must go in. Let me collect my thoughts; the business is 'just things
in general,' but especially the sale of some cottage or other and the
land it stands on. Yes, yes, I remember; the papers are all right. Now
for the old ladies."

He made his entrance into the Manor drawing room a few minutes later
with a charming smile.

Mrs. de Tracy actually walked a few steps to meet him, with a greeting
less frigid than usual.

"I'm glad to see you, Mark," said she. "Bates said you preferred to
walk from the station."

Mark turned his kind eyes on Miss Smeardon, and held her knuckly hand
in his own almost tenderly. It was a very bad habit, which had led to
some mischief in the past, that when he was sorry for a thing he
wanted to be very kind to it; and this made him unusually pleasing,
and dangerous!

"Business first and pleasure afterwards; excellent maxim!" he said to
himself half an