bathed in faint
winter sunshine; and it struck her, with a tardy touch of compunction,
that it would have been more humane to ask if he had come from a
distance, and to offer, in that case, to inquire if her husband could
receive him. But as the thought occurred to her he passed out of
sight behind a pyramidal yew, and at the same moment her attention was
distracted by the approach of the gardener, attended by the bearded
pepper-and-salt figure of the boiler-maker from Dorchester.

The encounter with this authority led to such far-reaching issues that
they resulted in his finding it expedient to ignore his train, and
beguiled Mary into spending the remainder of the morning in absorbed
confabulation among the greenhouses. She was startled to find, when the
colloquy ended, that it was nearly luncheon-time, and she half expected,
as she hurried back to the house, to see her husband coming out to meet
her. But she found no one in the court but an under-gardener raking
the gravel, and the hall, when she entered it, was so silent that she
guessed Boyne to be still at work behind the closed door of the library.

Not wishing to disturb him, she turned into the drawing-room, and there,
at her writing-table, lost herself in renewed calculations of the outlay
to which the morning's conference had committed her. The knowledge that
she could permit herself such follies had not yet lost its novelty; and
somehow, in contrast to the vague apprehensions of the previous days, it
now seemed an element of her recovered security, of the sense that, as
Ned had said, things in general had never been "righter."

She was still luxuriating in a lavish play of figures when the
parlor-maid, from the threshold, roused her with a dubiously worded
inquiry as to the expediency of serving luncheon. It was one of their
jokes that Trimmle announced luncheon as if she were divulging a
state secret, and Mary, intent upon her papers, merely murmured an
absent-minded assent.

She felt Trimmle wavering expressively on the threshold as if in rebuke
of such offhand acquiescence; then her retreating steps sounded down the
passage, and Mary, pushing away her papers, crossed the hall, and went
to the library door. It was still closed, and she wavered in her turn,
disliking to disturb her husband, yet anxious that he should not exceed
his normal measure of work. As she stood there, balancing her impulses,
the esoteric Trimmle returned with the announcement of l