worked in him until he presently got up and went across the room to Lady Angela, interrupting her tête-à-tête with such an air of evident purpose that Mr. Jones arose and wandered away.

Daunt dropped into the vacant seat. “What have you been doing this afternoon?” he asked.

From his new position he could directly survey Felicia and Maurice; his eyes were upon them as he spoke.

“Writing to my friends,” Angela answered in a soft voice. She was a great correspondent, and it was quite understood by their fortunate recipients that her letters were to be preserved; future publication was a probability; Angela looked upon herself as destined to influence her time, after as well as before her death, and her friends were of the same opinion.

That Geoffrey Daunt, however, did not share this conviction of her significance was shown by his next placid question, “What about?”—quite implying that an alternative of souls or satin was equally interesting to him.

Angela had long ago told herself that she must not expect to be understood by this worldly relative. It was with the mildness of an intelligent forbearance that, as softly as before, she answered, “About how I feel life—theirs and mine.”

“You feel a good many things about it—don’t you?” Geoffrey smiled, though not mockingly, indeed, with a cool kindness. Both smile and kindness were keenly offensive to Angela, but with greater mildness, “I believe in feeling,” she returned.

“You and Maurice are alike in that.”

“Yes; with a difference; Maurice is a subjectivist; his feeling is an end; mine is a means.”

“For the good of others?” Geoffrey asked, and his tone denoted a perception of shades and meanings that his mask-like serenity did not imply. To be disturbed by the sinister smile of a Mona Lisa is one thing, but to suspect that the meditatively inclined head of a marble Hermes is gently quizzing one is a peculiarly baffling experience; it was one that Geoffrey often gave her. He was one of the few people, she told herself, who almost made her angry. She flushed now, ever so slightly, at the tone. Yet with a sweet patience that he should have felt as the turning of the other cheek, she answered, “I own that I try to live for others.”

“And Maurice for himself. So that the difference between you is that he is selfish and you unselfish; that, I own, is a great difference.”

Leaning her arm on the back of the sofa, Angela arranged the laces at her wrist.

“You have a talent for misinterpretation, Geoffrey;—wilful, isn’t it?—perhaps a habit caught in the scuffles of debate. But certain attitudes make misinterpretations by some people inevitable. One accepts it.”

“Misinterpret you, my dear Angela?” Geoffrey inquired, raising his eyebrows and looking not at her but at the young couple under the palm-tree. “I hope not. Surely I am right in assuming that to live for others is unselfish, and that you recognize it as being so.”

“I have owned to an aim—not to an attainment. Why is it that those who do not aim cannot forgive those who do?—try always to smirch the effort in the eyes of those who make it? I hope that I am not self-righteous, Geoffrey—I frankly recognize your intimation—why not make it as frankly?”

Geoffrey at this was silent for a moment or two, evidently not at all abashed by her discerning humility, and evidently thinking it over very lightly, as he would have thought over any unimportant fact put before him. Looking round at her and again smiling, he observed, “I am sure that you are very clever, and I am sure that you are sure that you are very good. I confess that I like to test your conviction by teasing you a little.”

“It would be better, Geoffrey, if, instead of ridiculing people, you were to sometimes try to help them by a little faith in them. Nothing is more maiming to an ideal not yet strong than ridicule; mine, happily, is strong, though I myself am weak.”

Geoffrey looked down at his shoe, turning his foot a little as though to observe the hue of his silk sock. He was silent, placidly silent; but it was now as if his thought had passed away from her and her words, and his abrupt change of the subject when he again spoke, as of a large mind turning from a trivial encounter with a small one, was anything but flattering. “Who is that girl?” he inquired.

Angela’s eyes followed his to Maurice and Felicia. She knew that Geoffrey’s interest in her, his relative, was only because of his interest in Maurice, his friend; knew that the match which for some years had seemed so imminent, and that by her friends was regarded as the quite disastrously bad match for her, was merely regarded by Geoffrey as the good match for Maurice. Angela had always hoped that Geoffrey saw the delay in final measures as caused by her own hesitation; and that at times he had tried to urge her to a decision, she had fancied more than once, and always with a soothing sense of sustainment. He knew Maurice so well; the hesitation, then, could not be Maurice’s, although to her weariness it so often seemed Maurice’s indecision and not his fear of hers that kept them apart. Looking now at the girl under the palm—the obvious link that Geoffrey had turned the talk to—she said vaguely, “A niece—a cousin—I forget which Mrs. Merrick said. A poor relation; this her one yearly peep at the world—the world to her. Quaint, isn’t it?”

“I shouldn’t like to be a poor relation of Mrs. Merrick’s,” Geoffrey observed. “An ugly woman,” he went on, adding, “The niece doesn’t look provincial.”

“No; oddly she doesn’t; not physically; but provincial in soul I should think. A curious little face, Geoffrey; ignorant, empty of all but a shallow joy in life. It hasn’t suffered, isn’t capable of much suffering. She looks like a soulless, sylvan creature; mocking, elusive, alluring.”

Geoffrey passed over the question of soul and body, reflecting that it was natural that Angela should show this funny spite. Maurice was clearly allured.

“Her dress isn’t provincial either,” he said; “its simplicity is extremely sophisticated. The dryad has found a dressmaker in her woods. She is a young lady who knows, at all events, how to dress.”

“And how to eat,” mused Angela. “Dear child, it’s really delightful to see such frank enjoyment of opportunity. That is her fourth sandwich.”

“I beg your pardon, it is her fifth.”

“You share Maurice’s interest.”

“Is Maurice so interested?”

“Isn’t he?”

“While I automatically count her sandwiches he meditates making a sketch of her.”

Again there was silence between them, and it was Angela who broke it with, “Why did you come here, Geoffrey?”

“Because Maurice came; I was glad of the chance of being with him in a quiet place where one can rest.”

“And why did Maurice come?”

Geoffrey responded promptly. “To see you—in a quiet place where he can see you.”

She let the assertion pass, forestalling a possible retort with—

“And I came for you and for Maurice and for Mrs. Merrick. I am fond of Mrs. Merrick.”

“Of ugly Mrs. Merrick? Really?”

“Really indeed. My likings are not founded on alluring faces or sophisticated gowns. I saw a good deal of her in London. She is interested in many of my objects. She is trying to grow.”

“And you are down here to help her. I hope that your efforts will bring something out. I confess that to me the plant looks dry and thorny.”

“Ah! that is because she is in such an arid soil. I can help her. She made me feel that, and I never refuse help.”

Her smile braved ironic retorts, but his answering smile was purely playful.

“Pray let me believe that you came solely for old friendship’s