g nerves, and even to
the slight discomfort of His Royal Highness himself, the air resounded
all day long with the terrific bangs of the blasting powder.

But, so long as he was pleased with the progress of the improvement,
Mildred felt no discomfort, nor would she allow any one else to
express any. It even aggravated her to see Miss Terry put her hands to
her head and jump, whenever a particularly large piece of ordnance was
discharged, and she would vow that it must be affectation, because she
never even noticed it.

In short, Mildred Carr possessed to an extraordinary degree that
faculty for blind, unreasoning adoration which is so characteristic of
the sex, an adoration that is at once magnificent in the entirety of
its own self-sacrifice, and extremely selfish. When she thought that
she could please Arthur, the state of Agatha's nerves became a matter
of supreme indifference to her, and in the same way, had she been an
absolute monarch, she would have spent the lives of thousands, and
shaken empires till thrones came tumbling down like apples in the
wind, if she had believed that she could thereby advance herself in
his affections.

But, as it never occurred to Arthur that Mrs. Carr might be in love
with him, he saw nothing abnormal about all this. Not that he was
conceited, for nobody was ever less so, but it is wonderful what an
amount of flattery and attention men will accept from women as their
simple right. If the other sex possesses the faculty of admiration, we
in compensation are perfectly endowed with that of receiving it with
careless ease, and when we fall in with some goddess who is foolish
enough to worship _us_, and to whom _we_ should be on our knees, we
merely label her "sympathetic," and say that she "understands us."

From all of which wise reflections the reader will gather that our
friend Arthur was not a hundred miles off an awkward situation.

CHAPTER XXXVI

One day, some three weeks after Arthur had gone, Angela strolled down
the tunnel walk, now, in the height of summer, almost dark with the
shade of the lime-trees, and settled herself on one of the stone seats
under Caresfoot's staff.

She had a book in hand, but it soon became clear that she had come to
this secluded spot to think rather than read, for it fell unopened
from her hand, and her grey eyes were full of a far-off look as they
gazed across the lake glittering in the sunlight, away towards t