ughing. She only told me because she knew I was interested
in every detail of your life, and Great-aunt Alison explains a lot of
things about her grand-niece."

Jean pondered on this for a little and then said:

"Pam once said I was on the verge of being a prig, and I'm not sure that
she wasn't right, and it's a hateful thing to be. D'you think I'm
priggish, Richard Plantagenet? Oh no, don't kiss me. I hate it.... Why
do you want to behave like that? It isn't nice."

"I'm sorry, Jean."

"And now your voice sounds as if you did think me a prig ... Here we
are at last, and I simply don't know what to say kept us."

"Don't say anything: leave it to me. I'll be sure to think of some lie.
Do you realise that we are only ten minutes behind the others?"

"Is that all?" cried Jean, amazed. "It seems like _hours_."

Lord Bidborough began to laugh helplessly.

"I wonder if any man ever had such a difficult lady," he said, "or one
so uncompromisingly truthful?"

He rang the bell, and as they stood on the doorstep waiting, the light
from the hall-door fell on his face, and Jean, looking at him, suddenly
felt very low. He was going away, and she might never see him again. The
fortnight he had been in Priorsford had given her an entirely new idea
of what life might mean. She had not been happy all the time: she had
been afflicted with vague discontents and jealousies such as she had not
known before, but at the back of them all she was conscious of a shining
happiness, something that illuminated and gave a new value to all the
commonplace daily doings. Now, as in a flash, while they waited for the
door to open, Jean knew what had caused the happiness, and realised that
with her own hand she was shutting the door on the light, shutting
herself out to a perpetual twilight.

"If only you hadn't been a man," she said miserably, "we might have been
such friends."

A servant opened the door and they went in together.

CHAPTER XVII

"When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu whit,
Tu whu, a merry note
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."

Mhor began to look forward to Christmas whenever the days began to
shorten and the delights of summer to fade; and the moment the
Hallowe'en "dooking" for apples was over he and