employer to do exactly what she most wanted to do, and the poor creature had developed a really wonderful ingenuity in divining what these wishes were. Just now, however, she was, to use a sporting phrase, “at 14 fault” for a minute. She could not exactly tell whether Mrs. de Tracy wanted to be urged to ask her niece to Stoke Revel, or whether she wanted to be supplied with a really plausible excuse for not doing so. Those of you who have seen a hound at fault can imagine the companion at this moment: irresolute, tense, desperately anxious to find and follow up the right scent. Compromise, that useful refuge, came to her aid.

“It is difficult to know,” she faltered. Then Mrs. de Tracy gave her the lead.

“Maria Spalding is right when she says that my husband’s niece contemplates a duty in visiting Stoke Revel,” she announced. “The young woman is the lawful daughter of Cynthia de Tracy that was: our solicitors could never discover anything dubious in the marriage, though we long suspected it. Therefore, though I never could have invited her here, I admit that the Admiral’s niece has a right to come, in a way.”

“Though her maiden name was Bean!” 15 ejaculated the companion, almost under her breath. “There are Pease in the North, as everyone knows; perhaps there are Beans somewhere.”

“There have never been Beans,” said Mrs. de Tracy solemnly and totally unconscious of a pun. “Look for yourself!”

Miss Smeardon did not need to rise from her seat and fetch Burke: it lay always close at hand. She merely lifted it on to her knee and ran her finger down the names beginning with B-e-a.

“Beaton, Beare, Beatty, Beale––” she read out, and she shook her head in dismal triumph; “but never a Bean! No! we English have no such dreadful names, thank Heavens!”

“This is the beginning of April,” pursued Mrs. de Tracy, referring to a date-card. “Maria Spalding’s course at Nauheim will take three weeks. We must allow her a week for going and coming. During that time Mrs. David Loring can be my guest.”

“A whole month!” cried the companion, as though in ecstasy at her employer’s generosity. “A whole month at Stoke Revel!”

Mrs. de Tracy took no notice. “Write in my name to Maria Spalding, please,” she commanded. “Be sure that there is no mistake about dates. Mention the departure and arrival of trains, and say that Mrs. David Loring will find a fly at the station. That is all, I think.”

The companion bent officiously forward. “You remember, of course, that young Mr. Lavendar comes down next week upon business?”

“Well, what if he does?” asked Mrs. de Tracy shortly.

“Mrs. David Loring is a widow,” murmured the companion darkly; “a young American widow; and they are said to be so dangerous!”

Mrs. de Tracy drew herself up. “Do you insinuate that the Admiral’s niece will lay herself out to attract Mr. Lavendar, a 17 widow in the house of a widow! You go rather too far, Miss Smeardon, though you are speaking of an American. Besides, allusions of this character are extremely distasteful to me. I have been told that the minds of unmarried women are always running upon love affairs, but I should hardly have thought it of you.”

“I’m sure I never imagined any about myself!” murmured Miss Smeardon with the pitiable writhe of the trodden-on worm.

“I should suppose not,” rejoined Mrs. de Tracy gravely, and the companion took up her pen obediently to write to Maria Spalding.

“Shall I send your love to the Admiral’s niece?” she humbly enquired, “or––or something of the kind?” There was irony in the last phrase, but it was quite unconscious.

“Not my love,” replied Mrs. de Tracy, “some suitable message. Make no mistake about the dates, remember.”

Thus a letter containing dates, and though not love, the substitute described by Miss Smeardon as “something of the kind” for an unwanted niece from an unknown aunt, left Stoke Revel by the afternoon post and reached Robinette Loring at breakfast next morning.

Young Mrs. Loring thought she had never taken so long a drive as that from the Weston railway station to Stoke Revel. The way stretched through narrow winding roads, always up hill, always between high Devonshire hedges. The rain-soaked lanes were slippery and she was unpleasantly conscious of the size and weight of the American wardrobe trunk that reared its mighty frame in front of her almost to the blotting-out of the driver, who steadied it with one hand as he plied the whip with the other. It struck her humorously that the trunk was larger than most of the cottages they were passing.

It was a late spring that year in England,––Robinette was a new-comer and did not know that England runs to late and wet springs, believing that they make more 20 conversation than early, fine ones,––and the trees were just bursting into leaf. The sun had not shone for three days and the landscape, for all its beautiful greenness, looked gloomy to an eye accustomed to a good deal of crude sunshine.

As the horse mounted higher and higher Robinette glanced out of the windows at the dripping boughs and her face lost something of its sparkle of anticipation. She had little to expect in the way of a warm welcome, she knew that; or at least her mind knew it, but Robinette’s heart always expected surprises, although she had lived two and twenty summers and was a widow at that.

Her mother had been a de Tracy of Stoke Revel whose connection with that ancient family had ceased abruptly when she met an American architect while traveling on the Continent, married him out of hand and went to his native New England with him. The de Tracys had no opinion of America, its government, its institutions, its customs, 21 or its people, and when they learned that Cynthia de Tracy had not only allied herself with this undesirable nation, but had selected a native by the name of Harold Bean, they regarded the incident of the marriage as closed.

The union had been a happy one, though the de Tracys of Stoke Revel had always regarded the unfortunately named architect more as a vegetable than a human being; and the daughter of the marriage was the young Mrs. Loring now driving in the station fly to the home of her mother’s people.

Her father had died when she was fifteen and her mother followed three years after, leaving her with a respectable fortune but no relations; the entire family (happily, Mrs. de Tracy would have said) having died out with Harold. Robinette was unspeakably lonely, even with her hundred friends, for there was enough English blood in her to make her cry out inwardly for kith and kin, for family ties, for all the dear familiar backgrounds 22 of hearth and home. Had a welcoming hand been stretched across the sea she would have flown at once to make acquaintance with the de Tracys, cold and indifferent as they had always been, but no bidding ever came, and the picture of the Manor House of Stoke Revel on her dressing-table was the only reminder of her connection with that ancient and honourable house.

It is not difficult to see, under the circumstances, how the nineteen-year-old Robinette became the wife of the first man in whom she inspired a serious passion.

It is incredible that women should confuse the passive