to deliver in the absorption of
contemplating Miss Robinson; in fact, there was a heap of things she had
wanted to talk over. The most important, at any rate, was the question
of his Christmas holiday. Aunt Eleanor wanted Mary to spend the two or
three weeks with her, but she was anxious that Wyndham, too, should
join their little party over the New Year--since she now understood that
he had emerged to some extent from his austere seclusion. A refusal Aunt
Eleanor would take to heart--she naturally regarded her own home as his,
as the place to which his mind should spontaneously turn at such a
season.

Wyndham welcomed the invitation. It was more than two years since he had
passed any time in Hertfordshire, and the visit itself, which last
Christmas he had sullenly avoided, would afford him the greatest
satisfaction. Much as he appreciated the Robinson housekeeping, it was a
relief to feel definitely that he was not staying the year-end at his
studio, with no resource save their cordial hospitality.

Mary went off in great elation. "I don't know when I have felt so happy
as to-day," she declared, as she kissed him. "I leave my best love for
the work--and for the lady as well," she added, smiling.

It was arranged on the door-step that they should travel down to
Hertfordshire together, and Mary insisted he must leave her to look up
the trains, and make all the arrangements.

"It is just the sort of task I enjoy," she assured him. "Looking up
trains to get into the country always sends me into a sort of happy
excitement; it is part of the joy of anticipation."

Wyndham was left, somehow, a greater admirer of Miss Robinson. He
studied her again in his own picture, and accepted her as a far finer
creature than he had realised--even allowing for this idealisation of
her in paint. "My feeling against her must be purely morbid, and it's
really too bad when she likes my society so much!--she has no idea how
much she shows it." Her unsophistication, hitherto a deficiency, began
to take on a certain charm. How refreshing this womanly simplicity in a
world of showy coquettes and chattering, feather-headed females! Even
Mary, who was so shrewd and fastidious, had been compelled to pay her
homage. The Robinson family was charming! What fine old-world courtesy
in the father--many a born aristocrat might well take a lesson from him!
How unassuming, too, the mother, full of quiet virtues and womanly
excellencies!

And Mary's si