uneasy look, as if he had something to say to her and could not. Bice
felt instinctively that if he ever said that something it would be
disagreeable, and avoided his presence. But it troubled her to lose this
side of her landscape, so to speak. The new was entrancing, but the old
was a loss. She missed it, and thought herself a fool for missing it,
and laughed, but felt it the more.

The only member of the household with whom she remained on the same easy
terms as before was Jock, who came to the house in Mayfair at hours when
nobody else was admitted, though he was quite unaware of the privilege
he possessed. He came in the morning when Bice, too young to want the
renewal which the Contessa sought in bed and in the mysteries of the
toilette, sometimes fretted a little indoors at the impossibility of
getting the air into her lungs, and feeling the warmth of the morning
light. She was so glad to see him that Jock was deeply flattered, and
sweet thoughts of the most boundless foolishness got in to his head.
Bice ran to her room, and found one of her old hats which she had worn
in the country, and tied a veil over her face, and came flying
downstairs like a bird.

"We may go out and run in the Park so long as no one sees us," she
cried. "Oh, come; nobody can see me through this veil."

"And what good will the air do you through that veil?" said Jock
contemptuously. "You can't see the sun through it; it makes the whole
world black. I would not go out if I were you with that thing over my
face, the only chance I had for a walk. I'd rather stay at home; but
perhaps you like it. Girls are such----"

"What? You are going to swear, and if you swear I will simply turn my
back. Well, perhaps you didn't mean it. But I mean it. Boys are
such---- What? little prudes, like the old duennas in the books, and that
is what you are. You think things are wrong that are not wrong. But it
is to an Englishman the right thing to grumble," Bice said, with a smile
of reconciliation as they stepped into the street. On that sweet morning
even the street was delightful. It restored them to perfect satisfaction
with each other as they made their way to the Park, which stretched its
long lines of waving grass almost within sight.

"And I suppose," said Jock, after a pause, "that you like being here?"

Bice gave him a look half friendly, half disdainful. "I like living,"
she said. "In the country in what you call the quiet, it is only to be
ha