lation must change everything.

He glanced at Jane, a little irritated that she should not perceive
his mood and exorcise it. But she had not her mother's marvellous
susceptibility. She drank her tea in serene silence. He made a few
haphazard remarks, hoping to lose in conversation the cloud that
threatened his evening; but she only assented tranquilly and watched the
changing colors of the early sunset.

"Have you made a vow to agree with everything I say?" he asked finally,
half laughing, half in earnest.

"Not at all," she replied placidly, "but you surely do not want an
argument?"

"Oh, no," he answered her, vexed at himself.

"What do you think of Mrs. ------'s novel?" he suggested, as the pages,
fluttering in the rising breeze, caught his attention.

"Mother is reading it, not I," she returned indifferently. "I don't care
very much for the new novels."

Involuntarily he turned as if to catch her mother's criticism of the
book: light, perhaps, but witty, and with a little tang of harmless
satire that always took his fancy. But she was not there. He sighed
impatiently; was it possible he was a little bored?

A quick step sounded on the gravel walk, a swish of skirts.

"It is Louise Morris," she said, "I'll meet her at the gate."

After a short conference she returned.

"Will you excuse me, please?" she said, quite eagerly for her. "Mother
will be down soon, anyway, I am sure. Louise's brother is back; he has
been away in the West for six years. Mother will be delighted--she was
always so fond of Jack. Louise is making a little surprise for him. He
must be quite grown up now. I'll go and tell mother."

A moment later and she was gone. Mrs. Leroy took her place in the
window, and imperceptibly under her gentle influence the cloud faded
from his horizon; he forgot the doubt of an hour ago. At her suggestion
he dined there, and found himself, as always when with his hostess, at
his best. He felt that there was no hypocrisy in her interest in his
ideas, and the ease with which he expressed them astonished him even
while he delighted in it. Why could he not talk so with Jane? It
occurred to him suddenly that it was because Jane herself talked rarely.
She was, like him, a listener, for the most part. His mind, unusually
alert and sensitive to-night, looked ahead to the happy winter evenings
he had grown to count on so, and when, with an effort, he detached
this third figure from the group to be so closely all