is side of the
country.--Good-day to you, Knott--goodbye, Miss St. Quentin.--Wonder if
I'd better ask her to Whitney," he thought, "on the chance of its being
Shotover? Better sound him first though. Never let a man in for a woman
unless you've very good reason to suppose he wants her."

Honoria, meanwhile, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her long,
fur-lined, tan, cloth, driving-coat sat down on the arm of Mary
Ormiston's flowery-patterned, chintz-covered chair.

"I left you all in a state of holy peace and quiet," she said, smiling,
"and a fine show you've got on hand by the time I come back."

"They ran across the ten-acre field and killed in the shrubbery," Mrs.
Ormiston put in.

John Knott limped forward. He stood with his hands behind him looking
down at the two ladies. Some months had elapsed since he and Miss St.
Quentin had met. He was very fond of the young lady. It interested him
to meet her again. Honoria glanced up at him smiling.

"Have you been out too?" she asked.

"Not a bit of it. I'm too busy mending other people's brittle anatomy
to have time to risk breaking any part of my own. I'm ugly enough
already. No need to make me uglier. I came here for the express purpose
of calling on you."

"You saw Katherine?" Mary asked.

"Oh yes! I saw Cousin Katherine."

"How is she?"

"An embodiment of faith, hope, and charity, as usual, but with just
that pinch of malice thrown in which gives the compound a flavour. In
short, she is enchanting. And then she looks so admirably well."

"That six months at sea was a great restorative," Mary remarked.

"Yet it really is rather wonderful when you consider the state she was
in before we went to you at Ormiston, and how frightened we were at her
undertaking the journey to Naples."

"Her affections are satisfied," Dr. Knott said, and his loose lips
worked into a smile, half sneering, half tender. "I am an old man, and
I have had a good lot to do with women--at second hand. Feed their
hearts, and the rest of the mechanism runs easy enough. Anything short
of organic disease can be cured by that sort of nourishment. Even
organic disease can be arrested by it. And what's more, I have known
disease develop in an apparently perfectly healthy subject simply
because the heart was starved. Oh! I tell you, you're marvelous
beings."

"And yet you know I feel so abominably sold," Honoria declared, "when I
consider the way in which we all--Roger, Mr. Quayle, and