resisted the temptation. Because she liked Festing, she
would not persuade him to do something for which he might afterwards
reproach himself.

"No," she said, "perhaps you oughtn't to tell me. But I don't think you
need be nervous. If you have the right feeling, you will take the proper
line."

Then they went into the house where the curate was talking to Gardiner.

CHAPTER VI

FESTING KEEPS HIS WORD

Next afternoon Festing leaned his borrowed bicycle against the gate at
Knott Scar and walked up the drive. He had grave misgivings, but it was
too late to indulge them, and he braced himself and looked about with
keen curiosity. The drive curved and a bank of shrubs on one side
obstructed his view, but the Scar rose in front, with patches of heather
glowing a rich crimson among the gray rocks. Beneath these, a dark
beech wood rolled down the hill. On the other side there was a lawn that
looked like green velvet. His trained eye could detect no unevenness;
the smooth surface might have been laid with a spirit level. Festing had
seen no grass like this in Canada and wondered how much labor it cost.

Then he came to the end of the shrubs and saw a small, creeper-covered
house, with a low wall, pierced where shallow steps went up, along the
terrace. The creeper was in full leaf and dark, but roses bloomed about
the windows and bright-red geraniums in urns grew upon the wall. He
heard bees humming and a faint wind in the beech tops, but the shadows
scarcely moved upon the grass, and a strange, drowsy quietness brooded
over the place. Indeed, the calm was daunting; he felt he belonged
to another world and was intruding there, but went resolutely up the
shallow steps.

Two white-haired ladies received him in a shady, old-fashioned room with
a low ceiling. There was a smell of flowers, but it was faint, and
he thought it harmonized with the subdued lighting of the room. A
horizontal piano stood in a corner and the dark, polished rosewood had
dull reflections; some music lay about, but not in disorder, and he
noted the delicate modeling of the cabinet with diamond panes it had
been taken from. He knew nothing about furniture, but he had an eye for
line and remarked the taste that characterized the rest of the articles.
There were a few landscapes in water-color, and one or two pieces of old
china, of a deep blue that struck the right note of contrast with the
pale-yellow wall.

Festing felt that the house had an inf