it was particularly beautiful with its deep reds and golds and
purples and bronzes. The Robin's Seat was a favourite resting-place of
these two married lovers, who fed the robins that came strutting about
their feet, and even perched on their knees, asking a crumb.

Despite the disturbance of her mind Lady O'Gara had not forgotten her
feathered pensioners. She threw crumbs to them as she talked, and the
robins picked them up and flirted their little heads and bodies
daintily, turning a bright inquiring eye on her when the supply ceased.

"Well, Mary?"

"I hate to tell you, Shawn." She brushed away the last crumbs from her
lap. "I did not tell you the truth when I said there was nothing
disturbing among my letters."

"I knew there was something. We have not lived so long together for me
not to know you through and through. And you are as open as the day."

"It was a horrid thing, a creeping, lying thing."

"An anonymous letter." His eyes fluttered nervously under the droop of
the long lashes. "You should have put it in the fire, darling."

"I did. There was so little of it that unfortunately I saw it all at a
glance. It is horrid to think that any one about here could do such a
thing."

Suddenly she laughed. She had a peculiarly joyous laugh.

"They,--whoever wrote it--should have said something more likely to be
believed. They said--I beg your pardon for telling you, Shawn--that
you were visiting a lady at the Waterfall Cottage."

She was looking at him and suddenly she saw the shadows come in his
face which had had the power to disturb her before: or she thought she
did. The upper part of his face was in shadow from the balsam that
dropped its trails like a fringe over the arch.

"You did not believe it, Mary?"

"What do you think? Would you believe such a story of me?"

"Don't!" he said, and there was something sharp, like a cry, in the
protest. "No reptile would be base enough to spit at you."

They were alone together. Below them the terraces fell to the coloured
bogs. A river winding through the bog showed as a darkly blue ribbon,
reflecting the cloud of indigo which hung above the bog. Beyond was
the Wood of the Echoes, the trees apparently with their feet in the
water in which other trees showed inverted. Not a creature to see
them, but the robins.

Suddenly he put his head down on her shoulder, with the air of a tired
child.

"Your correspondent was not a liar, Mary," he sai