gant, and in mere beauty--quite apart from charm, which she
didn't claim--she surely excelled Helen; Helen with her narrow eyes, odd
projecting nose, and small, sulkily-moulded lips. Deeply though she felt
the fascination of her friend's strange visage, she could but believe
her own the lovelier. So many people--not only Franklin Winslow
Kane--had thought her lovely. There was no disloyalty in recognising the
fact for oneself, and an innocent satisfaction in the hope that Mr.
Digby might recognise it too.

The day that flashed by on either side had also a festive quality: blue
skies heaped with snowy clouds; fields brimmed with breeze-swept grain,
green and silver, or streaked with the gold of butter-cups; swift
streams and the curves of summer foliage. It was a country remote,
wooded and pastoral, and Althea, a connoisseur in landscapes, was
enchanted.

'Do you like it?' Helen asked her as they passed along the edge of a
little wood, glimpses of bright meadow among its clearings. 'We are
almost there now, and it's like this all about Merriston.'

'I've hardly seen any part of England I like so much,' said Althea. 'It
has a sweet, untouched wildness rather rare in England.'

'I always think that it's a country to love and live in,' said Helen.
'Some countries seem made only to be looked at.'

Althea wondered, as she then went on looking at this country, whether
she were thinking of her girlhood and of her many journeys to Merriston.
She wondered if Mr. Digby were thinking of his boyhood. Ever since
seeing those two together yesterday afternoon she had wondered about
them. She had never encountered a relationship quite like theirs; it was
so close, so confident, yet so untender. She could hardly make out that
they liked each other; all that one saw was that they trusted, so that
it had something of the businesslike quality of a partnership. Yet she
found herself building up an absurd little romance about their past. It
might be, who knew, that Mr. Digby had once been in love with Helen and
that she had refused him; he was poor, and she had said that she must
marry money. Althea's heart tightened a little with compassion for Mr.
Digby. Only, if this ever had been, it was well over now; and more
narrowly observing Mr. Digby's charming and irresponsible face, she
reflected that he was hardly the sort of person to illustrate large
themes of passion and fidelity.

A fly was waiting for them at the station, and as they j