open country, of the good
brown earth and of the clean wind of heaven.

"Hello, Hugh!" said Lady Linden.

"Hello, my lady," said he, and kissed her. It had been his habit from
boyhood, also it had been his lifelong habit to love and respect the old
dame, and to feel not the slightest fear of her. In this he was
singular, and because he was the one person who did not fear her she
preferred him to anyone else.

"Hugh," she said--she went straight to the point, she always did; as a
hunter goes at a hedge, so her ladyship without prevarication went at
the matter she had in hand--"I have been talking to Marjorie about Tom
Arundel--"

His cheery face grew a little grave.

"Yes?"

"Well, it is absurd--you realise that?"

"I suppose so, but--" He paused.

"It is childish folly!"

"Do you think so? Do you think that she--" Again he paused, with a
nervousness and diffidence usually foreign to him.

"She's only a gel," said her ladyship. Her ladyship was Sussex born,
and talked Sussex when she became excited. "She's only a gel, and gels
have their fancies. I had my own--but bless you, they don't last. She
don't know her own mind."

"He's a good fellow," said Hugh generously.

"A nice lad, but he won't suit me for Marjorie's husband. Hugh, the
gel's in the garden, she is sitting by the lily-pond and believes her
heart is broken, but it isn't! Go and prove it isn't; go now!"

He met her eyes and flushed red. "I'll go and have a talk to Marjorie,"
he said. "You haven't been--too rough with her, have you?"

"Rough! I know how to deal with gels. I told her that I had the command
of her money, her four hundred a year till she was twenty-five, and not
a bob of it should she touch if she married against my wish. Now go and
talk to her--and talk sense--" She paused. "You know what I
mean--sense!"

A very pretty picture, the slender white-clad, drooping figure with its
crown of golden hair made, sitting on the bench beside the lily-pond.
Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed on the stagnant green water over
which the dragon-flies skimmed.

Coming across the soundless turf, he stood for a moment to look at her.

Hurst Dormer was a fine old place, yet of late to him it had grown
singularly dull and cheerless. He had loved it all his life, but
latterly he had realised that there was something missing, something
without which the old house could not be home to him, and in his dreams
waking and sleeping he had seen this