remembered that I mustn’t open my mouth, and I thought I would never come to the top.” The self-pitying retrospect brought the tears to her eyes, but she held up her head and looked and spoke her resentment, “I think you might have gone in first yourself. And Hilda! Why didn’t you wait until I came to the surface before you made her do it?”

Captain Archinard looked more vague under these reproaches than one would have expected after his exhibition of rather fretful autocracy.

“Made her!” he repeated, seizing with a rather mean haste at the error; “made her? She went in herself! Like a rocket, after you. By Jove! she showed her blood after all.”

“Hilda! you tried to save my life!”

Odd still held the younger girl on his arm, supporting her while she choked and panted, for she had evidently had not shown her sister’s aplomb and had opened her mouth. Katherine took her into her arms and kissed her with a warmth quite dramatic.

“Darling Hilda! And you were so frightened, too. I would have gone in after her,” she added, looking up at Odd with a bright, quick glance, “but there would have been nothing to my credit in that.”

“And I would have gone in after her, it goes without saying, Mr. Odd,” said the Captain, when Katherine had led away to the bathing-cabin her still dazed sister, “but you seemed to drop from the clouds. Really, you have put me under a great obligation.”

“Not at all. I have spent most of the day in the river. I merely went in a bit deeper to fish out that plucky little girl.”

“I’ve dived off that spot a hundred times. I’d no idea there were weeds. I’ve never known weeds to be there. I’ll send down one of the men directly after lunch and have it seen to. Really I feel a sense of responsibility.” The Captain went on with an air of added self-justification, “Though, of course, I’m not responsible. I couldn’t have known about the weeds.”

Weeds or no weeds, Odd could not forgive him for the child’s fright, though he replied good-humoredly to the invitation to the house.

“Mrs. Archinard would have called on Mrs. Odd before this, but my wife is an invalid—never leaves the house or grounds. She sees a good deal of Miss Odd. I knew your father myself as well as one may know such a recluse; spent some pleasant hours in his library—magnificent library you’ve got. Peculiarly satisfactory it must be, as you go in for that sort of thing. Won’t you come in to tea this afternoon? And Mrs. Odd? Miss Odd? I was sorry to find them out when I called the other day. I haven’t seen Mrs. Odd. I don’t see her at church.”

“No; we have hardly settled down to our duties yet, and my wife only got back from the Riviera a few weeks ago.”

“Well, I hope we shall keep you at Allersley now that your wanderjahre are over, and that you are married. I was wandering myself during your boyhood. My brother bought the place, you know; liked the country here immensely. Poor old Jack! Only lived ten years to enjoy it—and died a bachelor—luckily for me. But we’ve missed one another, haven’t we? Neighbors too. I have seen Mrs. Odd—at a dance in London, Lady Bartlebury’s, I remember; and I remember that she was the prettiest girl in the room. Miss Castleton—the beautiful Alicia Castleton.”

Miss Castleton’s fame had indeed been so wide that the title was quite public property, and the Captain’s reminiscent tone of admiration most natural and allowable. Odd accepted the invitation to tea, waded back round the hedge, gathered up his basket and rod, and made his way up through the park to Allersley Manor.

CHAPTER II

MRS. ODD and Miss Odd, Peter’s eldest and unmarried sister, were having an only half-veiled altercation when Odd, after putting on dry clothes, came into the morning-room just before lunch. Miss Odd sat by the open French window cutting the leaves of a review. There were several more reviews on the table beside her, and with her eyeglasses and fine, severe profile, she gave one the impression of a woman who would pass her mornings over reviews and disagree with most of them for reasons not frivolous.

Mrs. Odd lay back in an easy-chair. She was very remarkable looking. The adjective is usually employed in a sense rather derogatory to beauty pure and simple, yet Mrs. Odd’s dominant characteristic was beauty, pure and simple; beauty triumphantly certain of remark, and remarkable in the sense that no one could fail to notice her, as when one had noticed her it was impossible not to find her beautiful. It was not a loveliness that admitted of discussion. In desperate rebellion against an almost tame conformity, a rash person might assert that to him her type did not appeal; but the type was resplendent. Perhaps too resplendent; in this extreme lay the only hope of escape from conformity. The long figure in the uniform-like commonplace of blue serge and shirt-waist was almost too uncommonplace in elegance of outline; the white hand too slender, too pink as to finger-tips and polished as to nails; the delicate scarlet splendor of her mouth, the big wine-colored eyes, too dazzling.

Mrs. Odd’s red-brown hair was a glory, a burnished, well-coiffed, well-brushed glory; it rippled, coiled, and curved about her head. Her profile was bewildering—lazily, sweetly petulant. “Is this the face?” a man might murmur on first seeing Alicia.

Odd had so murmured when she had flashed upon his vision over a year ago. He was still young and literary, and, as he was swept out of himself, had still had time for a vague grasp at self-expression.

Mrs. Odd was speaking as he entered the room.

“I don’t really see, Mary, what duty has got to do with it.” Without turning her head, she turned her eyes on Odd: “How wet your hair is, Peter!”

Mary Odd looked up from the review she was cutting rather grimly, and her cold face was irradiated with a sudden smile.

“Well, Peter,” she said quietly.

“I fished a little girl out of the river,” said Odd, taking a seat near Alicia, and smiling responsively at his sister. “Captain Archinard’s little girl.” He told the story.

“An interesting contrast of physical and moral courage.”

“I have seen the children. They are noticeable children. They always ride to hounds.” Hunting had been Miss Odd’s favorite diversion during her father’s lifetime. “But the pretty one, as I remember, has not the pluck of her sister—physical, as you say, Peter, no doubt.”

“What sort of a person is Mrs. Archinard?”

“Very pretty, very lazy, very selfish. She is an American, and was rich, I believe. Captain Archinard left the army when he married her, and immediately spent her money. Luckily for him poor Mr. Archinard died—Jack Archinard; you remember him, Peter? A nice man. I go to see Mrs. Archinard now and then. I don’t care for her.”

“You don’t care much for any one, Mary,” said Mrs. Odd, smiling. “Your remarks on your Allersley neighbors are very pungent and very true, no doubt. People are so rarely perfect, and you only tolerate perfection.”

“Yet I have many friends, Alicia.”

“Not near Allersley?”

“Yes; I think I count Mrs. Hartley-Fox, Mrs. Maynard, Lady Mainwaring, and Miss Hibbard among my friends.”

“Mrs. Maynard is the old lady with the caps, isn’t she? What big caps she does wear! Lady Mainwaring I remember in London, trying to marry off her eighth daughter. You told me, I recollect, that she was an inveterate matchmaker.”

“She has no selfish eagerness, if that is what you understood me to mean.”

“But she does interfere a great deal with the course of events, when events are marriageable young men, doesn’t she?”