nds, that gifted and beautiful creature Rosamund
Leith, and her pleasant young husband. He, who found time for
everything, found time to give more than one "little party, just a few
friends, no more," specially for them; and the end of it was that
they found themselves acquainted with almost too many interesting and
delightful people.

At first, too, Rosamund continued to sing at concerts, but at the end of
July, after their return from Greece, when the London season closed,
she gave up doing so for the time, and accepted no engagements for the
autumn. Esme Darlington was rather distressed. He worked very hard in
the arts himself, and, having "launched" Rosamund, he expected great
things of her, and wished her to go forward from success to success.
Besides "the money would surely come in very handy" to two young
people as yet only moderately well off. He did not quite understand the
situation. Of course he realized that in time young married people
might have home interests, home claims upon them which might necessitate
certain changes of procedure. The day might come--he sincerely hoped it
would--when a new glory, possibly even more than one, would be added to
the delightful Rosamund's crown; but in the meanwhile surely the autumn
concerts need not be neglected. He had heard no hint as yet of any--h'm,
ha! He stroked his carefully careless beard. But he had left town in
August with his curiosity unsatisfied, leaving Rosamund and Dion behind
him. They had had their holiday, and had stayed steadily on in Little
Market Street through the summer, taking Saturday to Monday runs into
the country; more than once to the seacoast of Kent, where Bruce Evelin
and Beatrice were staying, and once to Worcestershire to Dion's mother,
who had taken a cottage there close to the borders of Warwickshire. The
autumn had brought people back to town, and it was in the autumn that
Rosamund withdrew from all contact with the hurly-burly of London. She
had no fears at all for her body, none of those sick terrors which some
women have as their time draws near, no premonitions of disaster or
presages of death, but she desired to "get ready," and her way of
getting ready was to surround her life with a certain stillness, to
build about it white walls of peace. Often when Dion was away in the
City she went out alone and visited some church. Sometimes she spent an
hour or two in Westminster Abbey; and on many dark afternoons she made
her way to St.