, notwithstanding
her perfect freshness and air of almost childlike simplicity, there was
a certain statuesque quality in the effect of her white-clad figure
seen thus in the shaded library, with its russet-red walls and
furnishings and ranges of dark bookshelves.

"I am so sorry," she said breathlessly. "I should have come sooner, but
I was talking to Lady Calmady, and I did not know it was so late. I am
not afraid of talking to Lady Calmady, she is so very kind to me, and
there are many questions I wanted to ask her. She promises to help and
tell me what I ought to do. And I am very glad of that. It will prevent
my making mistakes."

Her attitude and the earnestness of her artless speech were to Richard
almost pathetically engaging. His irritation vanished. He smiled,
looked up at her, his own face flushing a little.

"I don't fancy you will ever make any very dangerous mistakes!" he
said.

"Ah! but I might," the girl insisted. "You see I have always been told
what to do."

"Always?" Dickie asked, more for the pleasure of watching her stand
thus than for any great importance he attached to her answer.

"Oh yes!" she said. "First by our nurses, and then by our governesses.
They were not always very kind. They called me obstinate. But I did not
mean to be obstinate. Only they spoke in French or German, and I could
not always understand. And since I have grown up my elder sisters have
told me what I ought to do."

It seemed to Richard that the girl's small, round chin quivered a
little, and that a look of vague distress invaded her soft, ruminant,
wide-set eyes.

"And so I should have been very frightened, now, unless I had had Lady
Calmady to tell me."

"Well, I think there's only one thing my mother will need to tell you,
and it won't run into either French or German. It can be stated in very
plain English. Just to do whatever you like, and--and be happy."

Lady Constance stared at the speaker with her air of gentle perplexity.
As she did so undoubtedly her pretty chin did quiver a little.

"Ah! but to do what you like can never really make you happy," she
said.

"Can't it? I'm not altogether so sure of that. I had ventured to
suppose there were a number of things you and I would do in the future
which will be most uncommonly pleasant without being conspicuously
harmful."

He leaned sideways, stretching out to a neighbouring chair with his
right hand, keeping the light, silk-woven, red blanket up acro