deep-brown eyes. Being seven, her little brown-velvet frock
barely reached the knees of her thin, brown-stockinged legs planted one
just in front of the other, as might be the legs of a small brown bird;
the oval of her gravely wondering face was warm cream colour without red
in it, except that of the lips, which were neither full nor thin, and
had a little tuck, the tiniest possible dimple at one corner. Her hair
of warm dark brown had been specially brushed and tied with a narrow red
ribbon back from her forehead, which was broad and rather low, and this
added to her gravity. Her eyebrows were thin and dark and perfectly
arched; her little nose was perfectly straight, her little chin in
perfect balance between round and point. She stood and stared till
Winton smiled. Then the gravity of her face broke, her lips parted,
her eyes seemed to fly a little. And Winton's heart turned over within
him--she was the very child of her that he had lost! And he said, in a
voice that seemed to him to tremble:

"Well, Gyp?"

"Thank you for my toys; I like them."

He held out his hand, and she gravely put her small hand into it. A
sense of solace, as if some one had slipped a finger in and smoothed his
heart, came over Winton. Gently, so as not to startle her, he raised her
hand a little, bent, and kissed it. It may have been from his instant
recognition that here was one as sensitive as child could be, or the way
many soldiers acquire from dealing with their men--those simple, shrewd
children--or some deeper instinctive sense of ownership between them;
whatever it was, from that moment, Gyp conceived for him a rushing
admiration, one of those headlong affections children will sometimes
take for the most unlikely persons.

He used to go there at an hour when he knew the squire would be asleep,
between two and five. After he had been with Gyp, walking in the park,
riding with her in the Row, or on wet days sitting in her lonely nursery
telling stories, while stout Betty looked on half hypnotized, a rather
queer and doubting look on her comfortable face--after such hours, he
found it difficult to go to the squire's study and sit opposite him,
smoking. Those interviews reminded him too much of past days, when he
had kept such desperate check on himself--too much of the old inward
chafing against the other man's legal ownership--too much of the debt
owing. But Winton was triple-proofed against betrayal of feeling. The
squire welcomed