quiet day and they had tea together.

"We'll pretend," she would say, "that you've never met me before--and
it's awfully unwise for me to come and see you in chambers--but I
come and then perhaps--while I'm making the tea--you suddenly put
your arms round my waist, and of course I'm awfully offended. Then
you kiss me, and I begin to get fond of you--and then--" So she led
him through a child's game to the outburst of a man's passion and
he, amused with being the child, found in it all the burning zest
of being a man.

In the Spring that followed the conclusion of that third year, she
had reminded him of his promise to take her once to Apsley. He jumped
at it.

"A day in the country 'll do me all the good in the world!" he
exclaimed--"and you too. I'll write to Dolly at once and see that
no one's down there on Friday. If there isn't, we'll go."

CHAPTER III

They made a day of it. In Trafalgar Square at eleven o'clock the next
morning, they stepped into a taxi-cab--the same little vehicle that
Taylor, from the dining-room window, had seen spinning round the
curve of the drive. The hood was put down; the warm sunshine, just
touched with a light sting from the regions of cold air through which
it had passed, beat upon their faces. To such a day, from the grey
fogs and lightless hours of winter, one comes, finding life well
worth its while. Sally sat with her hand wrapped in Traill's, giving
vent to a thousand expressions of delight, drawing his sudden
attention to the thousand things that pleased her eye--the faint wash
of green from the buds upon the hedgerows, the bright clusters of
primroses that struck light through the shadows in the wood, forcing
life through the thick carpet of dead leaves that the trees had given
back to earth.

"Does it worry you--my keeping on pointing out things?" she asked
at last.

"Worry? Lord, no! Shout as much as you like. It reminds me of when
I was a kid, coming back from Harrow to Apsley for the holidays."

When they came in sight of the Manor, could perceive through rents
in the cloak of cedars that enveloped it, the high, graceful
Elizabethan chimneys and the points of the red gables on which the
starlings congregated, Traill half rose to his feet with a straining
of his neck--a light of excitement in his eyes.

"There it is!" he exclaimed. "That place through the dark trees there.
Jove, I haven't seen it for more than three years."

She followed the direction in