all was still. She got up and closed the door herself. As she re-crossed the room she did not pause at her baby's cot, but went up to the mirror and stood before it for some moments, thinking how admirably these loose white draperies set off her dark hair and sombre eyes. She had a strong impression that she ought to have been a prophetess, or a tragic singer. Nature had overlooked her own opportunities. There is a difference between being created and being a creation.

CHAPTER II

A MIDSUMMER EVENING

An hour later Anna crossed the flags, reading Ambrose Piton's letter. It was long and she stood some time engrossed in it, but at last she folded it and slipped it into her pocket with a sigh of decided relief. Then, mounting the stile, she jumped down into the meadow.

At that moment she caught the sound of a horse cantering along the road. It stopped and a gate clicked, then fell to with a clash that roused the dogs. She knew it must be Mr. Borlase. Standing on tiptoe she looked through the hedge, expecting he would turn off to the stable.

But he did not. He scanned the garden and the fields, and seeing the glimmer of her white dress between the bars of the stile, rode up and stood in his stirrups, looking over. Her eyes met his with a laughing glance of defiance.

'Don't speak. Let me anticipate your remark. I know it,' she said.

'You may anticipate anything agreeable.'

'"The grass is dewy, your feet will be wet, Miss Hugo."'

He laughed, glancing down at his horse's head and flicking a fly from its ear, then back at her with a swift sidelong look of admiration. It was lost upon her for she was standing on the stile surveying her shoes.

'They are wet,' she said.

'Of course they are. You must take them off instantly.'

'If you had not come, I should have had a walk by the beck.'

'Well, you are not going to walk now and must take them off.'

'Yes, I will, directly;' then patting his horse she added, 'My sister wants you to see baby, at least she did an hour ago. She saw you ride past, into the Dale, I suppose.'

'Now, Miss Hugo, there should not be all this difference between instantly and directly,' said Borlase. He swung off his horse, drew her hand from its neck, and interposed himself between them. 'Must I put up while you speak to Mrs. Severn?'

'And change my shoes? Then you need not dream of a new and unruly patient at Old Lafer. I shall be very glad if you'll stay for supper, but Dad is away.'

They had reached the door. Without waiting for an answer she ran up the steps and vanished.

Borlase stood staring into the hall, where whitewash and black oak alternated. Through an open door at the end he heard Elias reading aloud to Dinah, who meanwhile bustled about between the kitchen and the dairy, or slipped into her clogs and clattered into the fold-yard or buildings. He read aloud every night and she never ceased from work to listen. Borlase had often laughed in thinking of the extraordinary jumble of curtailed facts with which her mind must be stored. But to-night he was in no humour for laughter. On the contrary their simplicity struck him as pathetic. Our own moods colour the actions of others and he was suddenly feeling depressed and disappointed. Not only was he baulked in his intention of spending the evening at Old Lafer but Anna had been far from shy when she asked him to do so. It was useless to have exerted that delightful bit of authority over her in the matter of the shoes. She neither resented nor encouraged whatever he might do. His pulses had been stirred by the touch of her hand, a touch he had longed to make significant. She had taken it as a matter of course. Would she never perceive what he wanted of her?

And now she reappeared.

'You are not to see baby,' she said from half-way down the stairs. 'But do come in, won't you?'

'Not to-night,' he said, going round his horse to tighten the saddle-girths. He glanced up involuntarily at the windows of Mrs. Severn's room. But no one was visible. Yet he had an impression that they were watched.

'I have got a new song that suits my voice exactly. Clothilde is going to accompany it,' said Anna.

'I will wait until then to hear it.'

'I thought you did not care for her accompaniments.'

'I don't, as a rule. But it does not signify much, either way.'

'I've heard you declare that everything, the most trivial, ought to have a decided significance in one direction,' said Anna, after a little pause of astonishment.

'So I have, I believe.'

'And I know you have a great contempt for inconsistency.'

'Yes.'

'You once said it was the brand of our human nature.'

'I must have been in a grandiloquent or dogmatic mood. Perhaps I often am. However, it is true. It is also its bane, and I confess I am guilty of it.'

'Oh no, I don't think so. I know you really prefer the piano with singing to either violin or guitar, but you are harassed over something, a bad case perhaps, and you don't care for music of any kind to-night. Forgive me for teasing a little.'

There was a music in her tones for which he cared! She was standing on the steps with her hands behind her, and having busied himself with the saddle to a degree which he knew was ridiculous, he turned and glanced at her. She was critically examining his work; being able to ride bare-backed at a hand-gallop herself, she understood the points both of horse and accoutrements. He got his look at her, unperceived. It sent the blood from his face. 'How marvellously dear she is to me!' he thought, and was thankful to be able to think it coherently. He still had power over himself when he could frame his knowledge into words. He reasoned over it too. She was plain, she was little—not the ideal woman of his dreams. But his ideal woman had vanished long ago, and in her place—he knew well when—had come Anna Hugo with her heavy-browed, square-jawed face, her unruly mass of coarse dark hair, her deep-set scrutinising eyes, and that play of expression which tantalised him into wanting to know her every thought, because it showed him so many. Preparing to mount he glanced at her again.

This time their eyes met. Hers were eloquent with unembarrassed kindness. His had a distressed look to which self-control gave a hardness unaccountable to her except on the one presumption. He was certainly in trouble. They were friends, she might be able to give a lighter turn to his thoughts.

'Let me walk to the gate with you,' she said. 'I want to hear about your ride.'

He read her like a book and smiled at the artlessness of her arts. Yet how cruel she could be because she thought more for others than of herself! Use had strengthened her original nature by binding its second nature upon her. She arranged, comforted, disciplined, befriended, the whole household at Old Lafer; and he, who knew of what contradictious elements it consisted, knew too that she had lost sight of self in determined efforts to control them to unity and concord. This had made her old for her years, and she unconsciously treated as