eluctance seized her. She felt a desire to be alone.
What if instead of saying good-by to Welsley, she said good-by to her
dreams in Welsley? She summoned Annie and told her not to let any one
in.

"I'm going to spend a quiet day, Annie," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," said Annie, with an air of intelligent comprehension.

"Though what else any one ever does in old Welsley I'm sure I couldn't
say," she afterwards remarked to the cook.

"You're a cockney at 'eart, Annie," repeated that functionary. "The
country says nothing to you. You want the parks, that's what you want."

"Well, I was brought up in 'em, as you may say," said Annie, whose
father had been a park-keeper, and whose mother and grandmother were
natives of Westbourne Grove.

By a quiet day Rosamund meant a day lived through in absolute solitude,
a day of meditation in the cloistered garden. She would not have any
lunch. Then she would have a better appetite for the nursery tea at
which Robin would relate to her all the doings of the greatest day of
his life. Precious, precious Robin!

She went down into the garden.

It was a mistily bright day of November. The sun shone through a
delicate veil. The air was cold but not sharp. Neither autumn nor winter
ruled. It seemed like a day which had slipped into an interstice between
two seasons, a day that was somehow rare and exceptional, holding a
faint stillness that was strange. There was in it something of the far
away. If a fairy day can be cold, it was like a fairy day. On such a day
one treads lightly and softly and at moments feels almost as if out of
the body.

Lightly and softly Rosamund went to and fro between the high and mossy
walls of the garden, keeping to the straight paths. When the bells
chimed in the tower of the Cathedral they sounded much farther away
than usual; the song of the thrush somewhere in the elder bush near the
garden door was curiously remote; the caw-caw of the rooks dropped
down as if from an immeasurable distance. Through the mist the sunshine
filtered, lightly pale and pure, a sensitive sunshine which would surely
not stay very long in Rosamund's garden.

A sort of thin stillness had fallen upon the world.

And so another chapter of life was closing, the happy chapter of
Welsley!

Something of sadness accompanied Rosamund along the straight paths, the
delicate melancholy which attends the farewells of one who has regret
but who has hope.

With the new Dion and with the