self, for she had not anticipated that this
would continue to affect her so much. She supposed she had grown
accustomed to it during her last two visits to Brockhurst, and that,
this time, it would occasion her no shock. But the sadness of the young
man's deformity remained present as ever. The indignity of it offended
her. The desire by some, by any, means to mitigate the woeful
circumscription of liberty and opportunity which it inflicted, wrought
upon her almost painfully. And so she looked very hard at the hungry
anticking rooks, both to secure time for recovery of her equanimity,
and also to spare Richard smallest suspicion that she avoided beholding
his advance and installation.

"We needn't start until four, mother," she heard him say. "But I'm
afraid it is clearing."

Honoria turned from the window.

"Yes, it is clearing," she remarked, "incontestably clearing! You won't
escape the Grimshott function after all."

"It's a nuisance having to go," Richard replied. "But you see this is
an old engagement. People are wonderfully civil and kind. I wish they
were less so. They waste one's time. But it doesn't do to be
ungracious, and we needn't stay more than half an hour, need we,
mother?"

He looked up at Honoria.

"Don't you think, on the whole, you'd better come too?" he said.

But the young lady shook her head smilingly. She stood close beside
Lady Calmady.

"Oh dear, no," she answered. "I am quite absolutely certain I hadn't
better come too."

Richard continued to look up at her.

"Half the county will be there. Everything will be richly,
comprehensively dull. Think of it. Do come," he repeated, "it would be
so good for your soul."

"Oh, my soul's in the humour to be nobly careless of personal
advantage," Honoria replied. "It's in a state of almost perilously
full-blown optimism regarding the security of its own salvation to-day,
somehow."--Her glance rested very sweetly upon Lady Calmady.--"And then
all the rest of me--and not impossibly my soul has a word to say in
that connection too--cries out to go and tramp over the steaming turf
and breathe the scent of the fir woods again."

Honoria sat down lazily on the arm of a neighbouring easy-chair,
against the crimson cover of which her striped blue-and-white, shirting
dress showed excellently distinct and clear. Richard's prolonged and
quiet scrutiny oppressed her slightly, necessitating change of attitude
and place.

"And then," she continued, "