loved by the young people of the family, the wild and pathetic flowers belonged to the old lady he had come to interview. Somehow he seemed to know, as he told his mother later, quite a lot about Violet Walbridge, just through looking at her border.

The sun was setting now, and a little wind had come up, stirring the leaves on the old elm under whose shade, erratic and scant, the little group were seated. Three or four young men were there, splendid, if rather warm, in their wedding garments, and several young women and girls, the pretty pale colours of their fine feathers harmonising charmingly with the evening. At the far end of the garden a lady was walking, with a blue silk sunshade over her shoulder. As the two men came down the steps Mr. Walbridge pointed to her.

"There's my wife," he said. "Shall I come and introduce you?"

"No, thank you. No, no, I'll go by myself," the young man answered hastily, and as he went down across the lawn he heard a girl's voice saying laughingly: "Reporter to interview Mrs. Jellaby." The others laughed, not unkindly, but their laughter lent to Mr. Wick's approach to Mrs. Walbridge a deference it might otherwise not have had. She had not heard him coming, and was standing with her back to him, her head and shoulders hidden by the delphinium-blue sunshade, and when she turned, starting nervously at the sound of his voice, he realised with painful acuteness that delphinium blue is not the colour to be worn by daylight by old ladies. Her thin, worn face, in which the bones showed more than in any face he had ever seen, was flooded with the blue colour that seemed to fill all the hollows and lines with indigo, and her large sunken eyes, on which the upper eyelids fitted too closely, must have been, the young man noticed, beautiful eyes long ago. They were of that most rare eye-colour, a really dark violet, and the eyebrows on the very edge of the clearly defined frontal bone were slightly arched and well marked over the temples. When he had told her who he was and his errand, she flushed with pleasure and held out her hand to him, and he, whose profession is probably second only to that of dentistry in its unpopularity, was touched by her simple pleasure.

"My Chief thought the public would be interested in the wedding. He tells me this daughter—the bride, I mean—was the original of—of—one of your chief heroines."

Violet Walbridge led the way to an old, faded green garden seat, on which they sat down.

"Yes, she's the original of 'Rose Parmenter,'" she helped him out gently, without offence at his having forgotten the name. "I wish you had seen her. But you can say that she was looking beautiful, because she was——"

Mr. Wick whipped out his notebook and his beautifully sharpened pencil, contrived a little table of his knees, and looked up at her.

"'Rose Parmenter'—oh, yes. That's one of your best-known books, isn't it?"

"Yes, that and 'Starlight and Moonlight.' They sold best, though 'One Maid's Word' has done very well. That," she added slowly, "has been done into Swedish, as well as French and German. 'Queenie's Promise' has been done into six languages."

Her voice was very low, and peculiarly toneless, but he noticed a little flush of pleasure in her thin cheeks—a flush that induced him, quite unexpectedly to himself, to burst out with the information that a friend of his sister—Jenny her name was—just revelled in his companion's works. "Give me a box o' chocs," Kitty will say, "and one of Violet Walbridge's books, and I wouldn't change places with Queen Mary."

Without being urged, Mrs. Walbridge gave the young man details he wanted—that her daughter's name was Hermione Rosalind; that she was the second daughter and the third child, and that she had married a man named Gaskell-Walker—William Gaskell-Walker.

"He belongs to a Lancashire family, and they've gone to the Lakes for their honeymoon." The author waved her thin hand towards the group of young people at the other end of the lawn. "There's the rest of my flock," she said, her voice warming a little. "The tall man who's looking at his watch is my other son-in-law, Dr. Twiss of Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square. He married my eldest daughter, Maud, four years ago. Their little boy was page to-day. He's upstairs asleep now."

As she spoke one of the girls in the group left the others and came towards her and Wick.

"This is your daughter, too?" the young man asked, a little throb of pleasure in his voice.

"Yes, this," Mrs. Walbridge answered, taking the girl's hand, "is my baby, Griselda. Grisel, dear, this is Mr.—Mr.——"

"Wick," said the young man. "Oliver Wick."

"You've come to interview Mum?" Miss Walbridge asked, a little good-natured raillery in her voice.

The young man bowed. "Yes. I represent Round the Fire, and my Chief thought that the public would be interested in an account of the wedding——" His eyes were glued to the young girl's face. She was very small, and, he thought to himself, the blackest white girl he had ever seen; so dark that if he had not known who she was he might have wondered whether she were not the whitest black girl—her hair was coal-black and her long eyes like inkwells, and her skin, smooth as vellum, without a touch of colour, was a rich golden brown. She was charmingly dressed in canary-coloured chiffon, and round her neck she wore a little necklet of twisted strands of seed pearls, from which hung a large, beautifully cut pearl-shaped topaz.

"I came to tell you, Mum," she went on, glancing over her shoulder at one of the upper windows, "that Hilary's awake and bawling his head off, and Maud wants you to go up to him."

Mrs. Walbridge rose and Wick noticed, although he could not have explained it, how very different were her grey silk draperies from the yellow ones of her daughter. She had, moreover, sat down carelessly, and the back of her frock was crushed and twisted.

"It's my little grandson," she explained. "He's always frightened when he wakes up. I'll go to him. Perhaps you'd like my daughter to show you the wedding presents, Mr. Wick."

Oliver Wick was very young, and he was an ugly youth as well, but something about him held the girl's attention, in spite of his being only a reporter. This something, though she did not know it, was power, so it was perfectly natural that the little, spoilt beauty should lead him into the house to the room upstairs where the presents were set forth. His flowery article in the next number of Round the Fire expressed great appreciation of the gifts, but there was no detailed account of them, and that was because, although he looked at them and seemed to see what he was looking at, he really saw nothing but Miss Walbridge's enchanting little face.

"Do you ever read any of Mum's novels?" the girl asked him at last, as they stood by the window, looking down over the little garden into the quiet, tree-bordered road.

The young man hesitated, and she burst out laughing, pointing a finger of scorn at him.

"You've not?" she cried. "Own up. You needn't mind. I'm sure I don't blame you; they're awful rubbish—poor old Mum! I often wonder who it is does read them."

As she finished speaking, the door into the back room opened, and Mrs. Walbridge came out, carrying the little boy who had been crying. His long, fat legs, ending in shiny patent leather slippers, hung limply down, and his towsled fair head leant on her shoulder. He was dressed in cavalier costume of velvet and satin, and his fat, stupid face was blotted and blurred with tears. He looked so very large and heavy, and Mrs. Walbridge looked so small and old and tired that the young man went