ong interest in the facts which Constance briefly
repeated.

"Let me walk with you as far as the station," he said, when the time
came for her departure.

"Please don't trouble," Constance replied, with a quick glance at Mrs.
Lashmar's face, still resentful under the conventional smile.

Dyce, without more words, took his hat and accompanied her; the vicar
went with them to the garden gate, courteous but obviously embarrassed.

"Pray remember me to your father, Miss Bride," he said. "I should much
like to hear from him."

"It's chilly this evening," remarked Dyce, as he and his companion
walked briskly away. "Are you going far?"

"To Hollingford."

"But you'll be travelling for two or three hours. What about your
dinner?"

"Oh, I shall eat something when I get home."

"Women are absurd about food," exclaimed Dyce, with laughing
impatience. "Most of you systematically starve yourselves, and wonder
that you get all sorts of ailments. Why wouldn't you stay at the
vicarage to-night? I'm quite sure it would have made no difference if
you had got back to Hollingford in the morning."

"Perhaps not, but I don't care much for staying at other people's
houses."

Dyce examined his companion's face. She did not meet his look, and bore
it with some uneasiness. In the minds of both was a memory which would
have accounted for much more constraint between them than apparently
existed. Six years ago, in the days of late summer, when Dyce Lashmar
was spending his vacation at the vicarage, and Connie Bride was making
ready to go out into the world, they had been wont to see a good deal
of each other, and to exhaust the topics of the time in long
conversations, tending ever to a closer intimacy of thought and
sentiment. The companionship was not very favourably regarded by Mr.
Lashmar, and to the vicar's wife was a source of angry apprehension.
There came the evening when Dyce and Constance had to bid each other
good-bye, with no near prospect of renewing their talks and rambles
together. What might be in the girl's thought, she alone knew; the
young man, effusive in vein of friendship, seemed never to glance
beyond a safe borderline, his emotions satisfied with intellectual
communion. At the moment of shaking hands, they stood in a field behind
the vicarage; dusk was falling and the spot secluded.--They parted,
Constance in a bewilderment which was to last many a day; for Dyce had
kissed her, and without a word was gone.