ever, she did not always reveal. Now
she sat on a lounge before the fire, with the soft light of a colored lamp
falling upon her, while a great embroidered screen shut off the rest of
the partly-darkened room.

"I have been waiting for you with the tea so patiently, Ralph," she said.
"You look tired and moody--you have been out on the moors too long. See,
here is a low chair ready just inside the screen, and here is the tea. Sit
down and tell me what is troubling you."

I settled myself in the corner, and answered, looking into the fire:

"You were always kind to me, Alice, and one can talk to you. Something
made me unsettled to-day, and I didn't care about the birds, though I got
a plump brace for you. Alice, I can't help thinking that these brief
holidays, though they are like a glimpse of Paradise after my dingy rooms
in that sickening town, are not good for me. I am only a poor clerk in
your father's mill, and such things as guns and horses are out of my
sphere. They only stir up useless longings. So I return on Monday, and
hardly think that I shall come back for a long time."

Alice laughed softly, for she was a shrewd young person, then she laid her
little hand restrainingly on my arm, before she said:

"And who has a better right to the bay horse and the new hammerless
ejector than the nephew of the man who never uses them? Now, I'm guessing
at a secret, but it's probable that your uncle bought that gun especially
for you. Ralph, you are getting morbid--and you have not been shooting all
day. Did you meet Miss Carrington on the moor again?"

Now in such matters I was generally a blunderer; yet something warned me
that my answer would displease her. I could, however, see no way of
avoiding it, and when I said as unconcernedly as I could, "Yes, and talked
to her about Canada!" Alice for no particular reason stooped and dropped a
thread into the fire. Then lifting her head she looked at me steadily when
I continued, with some hesitation:

"You know how I was always taught that in due time I should work the lands
of Lindale Hall, and how, when we found on my father's death that there
was nothing left, I tried the cotton-mill. Well, after four years' trial I
like it worse than I did at the beginning, and now I feel that I must give
it up. I am going back to the soil again, even if it is across the sea."

Alice made no answer for a few moments; then she said slowly: "Ralph you
will not be rash; think it over wel