If I had a hat on," I said simply, "I should uncover."

The little bow she gave me would have launched another "thousand
ships." In the slight action all the charm of her was voiced
exquisitely. Grace, sweetness and dignity--all in a bow. So it was
always. Helen's features would not have fired a sheepcote: the charm
that lighted them blotted out a city. Cleopatra's form would not have
spoiled a slave: the magnetism of her ruined Marc Antony. Elizabeth's
speech would not have sunk a coracle: the personality behind it
smashed an Armada.

We came to her ball first. As I handed her her brassie:

"Tell me one thing," said I. "If I had not been there, how would you
have got over the wall?"

She looked at me mischievously. "I have a way," she said.

"I know," I said, patting her golf-bag. "These aren't really clubs at
all."

"What are they, then?"

"Broomsticks."

It was the best part of a mile to the fair lawn, where we holed out
underneath the cedars. I won with fourteen, which wasn't bad,
considering I was bunkered in a bed of daffodils. She gave me tea in
the old library, sweet with the fragrance of pot-pourri. Out of its
latticed windows I could see the rolling woods, bright in their fresh
green livery. For nearly an hour and a half we sat talking. I told
her of Daphne and the others. She told me of her mother and sisters
and how her brother had cared for the Abbey since her father's death.
It was true that the family was away. She was alone there, save for
her eldest sister's child--Roy. Next month she would go to London.

"Where I may come and see you?"

"I should be very hurt if you didn't. It's going to be rather nice."

"It is," I said with conviction.

"I meant the season. I'll enjoy it all. The dances and theatres,
Ranelagh, Ascot, Lord's, the Horse Show and everything. But--"

"How glad and happy she'll be to get back to the Abbey with its deep
woodland and its warm park, its gentle-eyed deer, its oaks and elms and
cedars, its rose-garden and its old paved court. How grateful to lean
out of her bedroom window into the cool, quiet, starlit nights. How
pleased to watch the setting sun making the ragged clerestory more
beautiful than did all its precious panes."

I stopped. She was sitting back in her chair by the window, chin in
air, showing her soft, white throat, gazing with half-closed eyes up at
the reddening sky.

"He understands," she murmured, "he understands."