ried along the terrace. Katherine met him on the steps of
the garden-hall.

"Is anything wrong, Winter?" she asked kindly, for the trusted servant
betrayed unusual signs of emotion. "Am I wanted?"

"Sir Richard has returned, my lady," he said, and his voice trembled.
"Sir Richard is in the Gun-Room. He gave orders that your ladyship
should be told that he would be glad to speak to you immediately."

CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH DICKIE SHAKES HANDS WITH THE DEVIL

"My dear, this is quite unexpected."

Lady Calmady's tone was one of quiet, innate joyousness. A gentle
brightness pervaded her whole aspect and manner. She looked wonderfully
young, as though the hands of the clock had been put back by some
twenty and odd years. Every line had disappeared from her face, and in
her eyes was a clear shining very lovely to behold. Richard glanced at
her as she came swiftly towards him across the room. Then he looked
down again, and answered deliberately:--

"Yes, it is, as you say, quite unexpected. This time last night I as
little anticipated being back here as you anticipated my coming. But
one's plans change rapidly and radically at times. Mine have done so."

He sat at the large, library writing-table, a pile of letters, papers,
circulars before him, judged unworthy of forwarding, which had
accumulated during his absence. He tore off wrappers, tore open
envelopes, quickly yet methodically, as though bending his mind with
conscious determination to the performance of a self-inflicted task.
Looking at the contents of each in turn, with an odd mixture of
indifference and close attention, he flung the major part into the
waste-paper basket set beside his revolving-chair. A tall, green-shaded
lamp shed a circle of vivid light upon the silver and maroon leather
furnishings of the writing-table, upon the young man's bent head, and
upon his restless hands as they grasped, and straightened, and then
tore, with measured if impatient precision, the letters and papers
lying before him.

Lady Calmady stood resting the tips of her fingers on the corner of the
table, looking down at him with those clear shining eyes. His reception
of her had not been demonstrative, but of that she was hardly sensible.
The reconciling assurances of faith, the glories of the third heaven,
still dazzled her somewhat. Her feet hardly touched earth yet, so that
her mother-love and all its sensitive watchfulness was, as yet,
somewhat in abeyance. She s