l du Chalet; besides a score of disquieting trifles which meant
nothing till they were strung on a thread. He felt himself beginning to
be infected with Flora Timson's mania against his will, against his
sober judgment; and he spun down Bagley Hill at a runaway speed, only
saved by a miracle from collision with a cart which emerged from
Hincksey Lane at the jolting pace with which the rustic pursues his
undeviating course.

CHAPTER XII

Milly, too, had not been without a sharp reminder that the leaves in her
life so blank to her, had been fully inscribed by another. She hardly
yet felt mistress of the house, but it was pleasant to rest and read in
the low, white-panelled drawing-room, which lowered awnings kept cool,
although the afternoon sun struck a golden shaft across the flowering
window-boxes of its large and deeply recessed bow-window. The whole room
was lighter and more feminine than Milly would have made it, but at
bottom the taste that reigned there was more severe than her own. The
only pictures on the panels were a few eighteenth century colored
prints, already charming, soon to be valuable, and one or two framed
pieces of needlework which harmonized with them.

Presently the door-bell rang and a Mr. Fitzroy was announced by the
parlor-maid, in a tone which implied that she was accustomed to his
name. He looked about the age of an undergraduate and was
extraordinarily well-groomed, in spite of, or perhaps because of, being
in a riding-dress. His sleek dark hair was neatly parted in the middle
and he was clean shaven, when to be so smacked of the stage; but his
manners and expression smacked of nothing of the kind.

"I'm awfully glad to find you at home, Mrs. Stewart," he said. "I've
been lunching at the Morrisons', and, you know, I'm afraid there's going
to be a row."

The Morrisons? They lived outside Oxford, and Milly knew them by sight,
that was all.

"What about?" she asked, kindly, thinking the young man had come for
help, or at least sympathy, in some embarrassment of his own.

"Why, about your acting Galatea. Jim Morrison's been a regular fool
about it. He'd no business to take it for granted that that was the part
I wanted Mrs. Shaw for. Now it appears she's telling every one that
she's been asked to play the lead at the Besselsfield theatricals; and,
by Jove, he says she is to, too!"

Milly went rather pale and then quite pink.

"Then of course I couldn't think of taking the part,