as possible in the
garden that was her special hobby, and in her last new summerhouse.

'I build two or three every summer,' she said. 'Now, there are
twenty-one! Roger laughs at me,' and there was a momentary bitterness
in the little eerie face, 'but how can one live without hobbies? That's
one--then I've two more. My album--oh, you _will_ all write in my album,
won't you? When I was young--when I was Maid of Honor'--and she drew
herself up slightly--'everybody had albums. Even the dear Queen herself!
I remember how she made M. Guizot write in it; something quite stupid,
after all. _Those_ hobbies--the garden and the album--are _quite_
harmless, aren't they? They hurt nobody, do they?' Her voice dropped,
a little, with a pathetic expostulating intonation in it, as of one
accustomed to be rebuked.

'Let me remind you of a saying of Bacon's,' said Langham, studying her,
and softened perforce into benevolence.

'Yes, yes,' said Mrs. Darcy in a flutter of curiosity.

'God Almighty first planted a garden,' he quoted; 'and, indeed, it is
the purest of all human pleasures.'

'Oh, but how _delightful!_' cried Mrs. Darcy, clasping her diminutive
hands in their thread gloves. 'You must write that in my album, Mr.
Langham, that very sentence; oh, how _clever_ of you to remember it!
What it is to be clever and have a brain! But, then--I've another
hobby--'

Here, however, she stopped, hung her head and looked depressed. Robert,
with a little ripple of laughter, begged her to explain.

'No,' she said plaintively, giving a quick uneasy look at him, as
though it occurred to her that it might some day be his pastoral duty to
admonish her. 'No, it's wrong. I know it is--only I can't help it. Never
mind. You'll know soon.'

And again she turned away, when, suddenly, Rose attracted her attention,
and she stretched out a thin, white, bird-claw of a hand and caught the
girl's arm.

'There won't be much to amuse you to-morrow, my dear--and there ought to
be--you're so pretty!' Rose blushed furiously and tried to draw her hand
away. 'No, no! don't mind, don't mind. I didn't at your age. Well, we'll
do our best. But your own party is so _charming!_' and she looked round
the little circle, her gaze stopping specially at Langham before it
returned to Rose. 'After all, you will amuse each other.'

Was there any malice in the tiny withered creature? Rose, unsympathetic
and indifferent as youth commonly is when its own affairs absorb i