,
and looking so well!"

"Mr. Moore," she said (and she startled him out of his reverie), "do you
ever give a little dinner-party at your rooms?"

"Well, seldom," he said. "You see, I have only the one evening in the
week; and I have generally some engagement or other."

[Illustration: "_There was a slight touch of color visible on the
gracious forehead when she offered him her hand._"]

"I should like to send you a salmon, if it would be of any use to you,"
she went on to say.

"Thank you very much; I would rather see you hook and land it than have
the compliment of its being sent to me twenty times over. I was thinking
this very minute of the Aivron, and your getting down to the ford the
day after to-morrow, and old Robert being there to welcome you. I envy
him--and you. Are you to be all by yourself at the lodge?"

"For the present, yes," Miss Honnor said. "My brother and Captain
Waveney come at the beginning of April. Of course it is rather hazardous
going just now; the river might be frozen over for a fortnight at a
time; but that seldom happens. And in ordinarily mild weather it is very
beautiful up there--the most beautiful time of the year, I think; the
birch-woods are all of the clearest lilac, and the brackens turned to
deep crimson; then the bent grass on the higher hills--what they call
deer's hair--is a mass of gold. And I don't in the least mind being
alone in the evening--in fact, I enjoy it. It is a splendid time for
reading. There is not a sound. Caroline comes in from time to time to
pile on more peats and sweep the hearth; then she goes out again; and
you sit in an easy-chair with your back to the lamp; and if you've got
an interesting book, what more company do you want? Then it's very early
to bed in Strathaivron; and I've got a room that looks both ways--across
the strath and down; and sometimes there is moonlight making the windows
blue; or if there isn't, you can lie and look at the soft red light
thrown out by the peat, until the silence is too much for you, and you
are asleep before you have had time to think of it. Now tell me about
yourself," she suddenly said. "I hope the constant work and the long and
depressing winter have not told on you. It must have been very
unpleasant getting home so late at night during the fogs."

He would rather she had continued talking about the far Aivron and the
Geinig; he did not care to come back to the theatre and Kate Burgoyne.

"One gets used