other by the hand, and Milly's face
was calm, even happy. Aunt Beatrice smiled at them broadly with her
large, handsome mouth and bright brown eyes.

"What, not had enough of spooning yet, you foolish young people! The
carriage will be round in one minute, and Milly won't be ready."

CHAPTER XXII

There is a joy in the return of every season, though the return of
spring is felt and celebrated beyond the rest. The gay flame dancing on
the hearth where lately all was blackness, the sense of immunity from
the "wrongs and arrows" of the skies and their confederate earth, the
concentration of the sense upon the intimate charms which four walls can
contain, bring to civilized man consolation for the loss of summer's
lavish warmth and beauty. Children are always sensible of these opening
festivals of the seasons, but many mature people enjoy without realizing
them.

To Mildred the world was again new, and she looked upon its most
familiar objects with the delighted eyes of a traveller returning to a
favorite foreign country. So she did not complain because when she had
left the earth it had been hurrying towards the height of June, and she
had returned to find the golden boughs of October already stripped by
devastating winds. The flames leaped merrily under the great carved
mantel-piece in her white-panelled drawing-room, showing the date 1661,
and the initials of the man who had put it there, and on its narrow
shelf a row of Chelsea figures which she had picked up in various
corners of Oxford. The chintz curtains were drawn around the bay-window
and a bright brass _scaldino_ stood in it, filled with the yellows and
red-browns, the silvery pinks and mauves of chrysanthemums. The ancient
charm, the delicate harmony of the room, in which every piece of
furniture, every picture, every ornament, had been chosen with an
exactness of taste seldom found in the young, made it more pleasurable
to a cultivated eye than the gilded show drawing-rooms into which wealth
too commonly crowds a medley of incongruous treasures and costly
nullities.

It was a free evening for Ian, and as it was but the second since the
Desire of his Eyes had returned to him, his gaze followed her movements
in a contented silence, as she wandered about the room in her slight
grace, the whiteness of her skin showing through the transparency of a
black dress, which, although it was old, Milly would have thought
unsuitable for a domestic evening. Whe