arden to the woodland shimmering in the noontide heat. Then
she looked at Julius March, her eyes and lips eloquent with joyous
conviction.

"Indeed, I think, God makes His whole creation over again for each one
of us, it is so beautiful. As in the beginning, so now," she said;
"behold it is very good--ah yes! who can doubt that--it is very good!"

"Amen. To you may it ever so continue," Julius murmured, bowing his
head.

That evening there was a dinner party at Brockhurst. Lord Denier
brought his handsome second wife. She was a Hellard, and took the judge
_faute de mieux_, so said the wicked world, rather late in life. The
Cathcarts of Newlands and their daughter Mary came; and Roger Ormiston
too, who, being off duty, had run down from London for a few days'
partridge shooting, bringing with him his cousin Colonel St.
Quentin--invalided home, to his own immense chagrin, in the midst of
the Afghan war. On the terrace, after dinner, for the night was warm
enough for the whole company to take coffee out of doors, Lady
Calmady--incited thereunto by her brother--had persuaded Mary Cathcart
to sing, accompanying herself on her guitar. The girl's musical gifts
were of no extraordinary order; but her young contralto was true and
sweet. The charm of the hour and the place, moreover, was calculated to
heighten the effect of the Jacobite songs and old-world love ditties
which she selected.

Roger Ormiston unquestionably found her performance sufficiently
moving. But then the girl's frank manner, her warm, gipsy-like
colouring, and the way in which she could sit a horse, moved him also;
had done so, indeed, ever since he first saw her, as quite a child,
some eight or nine years ago, on one of his earliest visits to
Brockhurst, fighting a half-broken, Welsh pony that refused at a grip
by the roadside. The little maiden, her face pale, for once, from
concentration of purpose, had forced the pony over the grip. Then,
slipping out of the saddle, she coaxed and kissed the rough, unruly,
little beast, with tears of apology for the hard usage to which she had
been obliged to subject it. So stout, yet so tender, a heart, struck
Roger as an excellent thing in woman. And now, listening to the full,
rounded notes and thrumming of the guitar strings, in the evening quiet
under the stars, he wished, remorsefully, that he had never been guilty
of any pleasant sins, that his record was cleaner, his tastes less
expensive; that he was a better