don't mind my prescribing for you now and then, do
you, Garry?"

"I was going to ask you to do it," he said, looking at Cardross
unblushingly. And at such perfidy the older man turned away with an
unfeigned groan just as Cecile, tennis-bat in hand, came out from the
hall, saw him, dropped the bat, and walked straight into his arms.

"Cecile," observed her mother mildly.

"But I wish to hug him, mother, and he doesn't mind."

Her mother laughed; Hamil, a trifle red, received a straightforward
salute square on the mouth.

"That," she said with calm conviction, "is the most proper and fitting
thing you and I have ever done. Mother, you know it is." And passing her
arm through Hamil's:

"Last night," she said under her breath, "I went into Shiela's room to
say good-night, and--and we both began to cry a little. It was as though
I were giving up my controlling ownership in a dear and familiar
possession; we did not speak of you--I don't remember that we spoke at
all from the time I entered her room to the time I left--which was
fearfully late. But I knew that I was giving up some vague proprietary
right in her--that, to-day, that right would pass to another.... And, if
I kissed you, Garry, it was in recognition of the passing of that right
to you--and happy acquiescence in it, dear--believe me! happy, confident
renunciation and gratitude for what must be."

They had walked together to the southern end of the terrace; below
stretched the splendid forest vista set with pool and fountain; under
the parapet, in the new garden, red and white roses bloomed, and on the
surface of spray-dimmed basins the jagged crimson reflections of
goldfish dappled every unquiet pool.

"Where is the new polo field?" he asked.

She pointed out an unfamiliar path curving west from the tennis-courts,
nodded, smiled, returning the pressure of his hand, and stood watching
him from the parapet until he vanished in the shadow of the trees.

The path was a new one to him, cut during the summer. For a quarter of
a mile it wound through the virgin hammock, suddenly emerging into a
sunny clearing where an old orange grove grown up with tangles of brier
and vine had partly given place to the advance of the jungle.

Something glimmered over there among the trees--a girl, coated and
skirted in snowy white, sitting a pony, and leisurely picking and eating
the great black mulberries that weighted the branches so that they bent
almost to the breaking.