nely in a whole world full of human
creatures--as though an old maid cannot find plenty to love, and who
will love her.'

'I don't know; I never tried. If I had a maiden aunt, perhaps----'
murmured Michael.

'If you had, and she were a nice, kind-hearted woman, you would love
her. I know it is the fashion to laugh at old maids, and make remarks on
their funny little ways; but I never will find fault with them. Why, I
shall be an old maid myself one day; but, all the same, I mean people to
love me all my life long. What are you doing now?' rather sharply; for
Michael had taken out his pocket-book and was writing the date.

'I thought I might like to remind you of this conversation one day. Is
it the sixteenth or the seventeenth? Thank you, Kester--the seventeenth?
There! it is written down.'

'You are very disagreeable, and I will not talk any more to you. I shall
go and look for some stag's-horn moss instead;' and Audrey sprang up
from her couch of heather and marched away, while Michael lay face
downward, with his peaked cap drawn over his eyes, and watched her
roaming over the moor.

Now, why was Audrey declaiming after this fashion? and why did she take
it into her head to air all sorts of independent notions that quite
shocked her mother? and why was she for ever drawing plans to herself of
a life that should be solitary, and yet crowded with interests--whose
keynote should be sympathy for her fellow-creatures and large-hearted
work among them? and, above all, why did she want to persuade herself
and Michael that this was the sort of life best fitted for her? But no
one could answer these questions; so complex is the machinery of
feminine nature, that perhaps Audrey herself would have been the last to
be able to answer them.

But she was very happy, in spite of all these crude theories--very happy
indeed; some fulness of life seemed to enrich her fine, bountiful
nature, and to add to her sense of enjoyment. Sometimes, when she was
sitting beside some mountain beck, in the hush of the noontide heat,
when all was silent and solitary about her except the gauzy wings of
insects moving above the grasses, a certain face would start up against
the background of her thoughts--a pair of dark, wistful eyes would
appeal to her out of the silence. That mute farewell, so suggestive, so
full of pain--even the strong warm grasp with which her hand had been
held--recurred to her memory. Was he still missing her, she wondered