r the Countess Leven habitually took her walks
in the direction of Limehouse in the east or Shepherd's Bush in the
west; and if so, why? As for the distance, the thoroughbred looked
as if she could do twenty miles without turning a hair, and Margaret
wished she would not walk quite so fast, for, like all great singers,
she herself easily got out of breath if she was hurried; it was not
the distance that surprised her, however, but the fact that Lady Maud
should ever visit such regions.

They reached the house and found Lord Creedmore in the library, his
lame foot on a stool and covered up with a chudder. His clear brown
eyes examined Margaret's face attentively while he held her hand in
his.

'So you are little Margery,' he said at last, with a very friendly
smile. 'Do you remember me at all, my dear? I suppose I have changed
almost more than you have.'

Margaret remembered him very well indeed as Mr. Foxwell, who used
always to bring her certain particularly delicious chocolate wafers
whenever he came to see her father in Oxford. She sat down beside him
and looked at his face--clean-shaven, kindly, and energetic--the face
of a clever lawyer and yet of a keen sportsman, a type you will hardly
find out of England.

Lady Maud left the two alone after a few minutes, and Margaret found
herself talking of her childhood and her old home, as if nothing very
much worth mentioning had happened in her life during the last ten or
a dozen years. While she answered her new friend's questions and
asked others of him she unconsciously looked about the room. The
writing-table was not far from her, and she saw on it two photographs
in plain ebony frames; one was of her father, the other was a likeness
of Lady Maud. Little by little she understood that her father had been
Lord Creedmore's best friend from their schoolboy days till his death.
Yet although they had constantly exchanged short visits, the one
living in Oxford and the other chiefly in town, their wives had hardly
known each other, and their children had never met.

'Take him all in all,' said the old gentleman gravely, 'Donne was the
finest fellow I ever knew, and the only real friend I ever had.'

His eyes turned to the photograph on the table with a far-away manly
regret that went to Margaret's heart. Her father had been a reticent
man, and as there was no reason why he should have talked much about
his absent friend Foxwell, it was not surprising that Margaret shoul