HE directed his face to the house, however, only to find himself in the presence of his mother, who had come back to her tea-table and whom he saw veri tably glare at the small object in his hands. From this object her scrutiny jumped to his own countenance, which, to his great discomfort, was not conscious of very successfully baffling it. He knew therefore a momentary relief when her observation attached itself to Jean Martle, whom Tony, planted on the lawn, was also undisguisedly watching and who was already introducing Effie to the treasure laid up in the shade of the tea-table. The girl had caught up the child on her strong young arm, where she sat robust and radiant, befrilled and besashed, hugging the biggest of the dolls; and in this position erect, active, laughing, her rosy burden, almost on her shoulder, mingling its brightness with that of her crown of hair, and her other hand grasping, for Effie’s further delight, in the form of another puppet from the pile, a still rosier imitation of it antici pated quickly the challenge, which, as Paul saw, Mrs. Beever was on the point of addressing her.

“Our wonderful cake’s not coming out?”

“It’s too big to transport,” said Mrs. Beever: “ it’s blazing away in the dining-room.”

Jean Martle turned to Tony. “ I may carry her in to see it? ”

Tony assented. “ Only please remember she’s not to partake.”

Jean smiled — at him. “ I’ll eat her share!” And she passed swiftly over the lawn while the three pair of eyes followed her.

“She looks,” said Tony, “ like the goddess Diana playing with a baby-nymph.”

Mrs. Beever’s attention came back to her son. “That’s the sort of remark one would expect to hear from you! You’re not going with her? ”

Paul showed vacant and vast. “ I’m going in.”

“To the dining-room? ”

He wavered. “ To speak to Miss Armiger.”

His mother’s gaze, sharpened and scared, had reverted to his morocco case. “ To ask her to keep that again? ”

At this Paul met her with spirit. “ She may keep it for ever!” Giving another toss to his missile, while his companions stared at each other, he took the same direction as Jean.

Mrs. Beever, disconcerted and flushed, broke out on the spot to Tony. “ Heaven help us all she has refused him! ”

Tony’s face reflected her alarm. “ Pray, how do you know? ”

“By his having his present to her left on his hands a jewel a girl would jump at! I came back to hear it was settled

“And you haven’t heard it’s not! ”

“What I haven’t heard I’ve seen. That it’s < not ’ sticks out of them! If she won’t accept the gift,” Mrs. Beever cried, “how can she accept the giver? ”

Tony’s appearance, for some seconds, was an echo of her question. “Why, she just promised me she would! ”

This only deepened his neighbour’s surprise. “Promised you? ”

Tony hesitated. “ I mean she left me to infer that I had determined her. She was so good as to listen most appreciatively to what I had to say.”

“And, pray, what had you to say?” Mrs. Beever asked with austerity.

In the presence of a rigour so immediate he found himself so embarrassed that he considered. “ Well everything. I took the liberty of urging Paul’s claim.”

Mrs. Beever stared. “ Very good of you! What did you think you had to do with it? ”

“Why, whatever my great desire that she should accept him gave me.”

“Your great desire that she should accept him? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

Once more Tony pondered. “ Did I never speak of it to you? ”

“Never that I can remember. From when does it date?” Mrs. Beever demanded.

“From the moment I really understood how much Paul had to hope.”

“How ‘much’?” the lady of Eastmead derisively repeated. “ It wasn’t so much that you need have been at such pains to make it less! ”

Tony’s comprehension of his friend’s discomfiture was written in the smile of determined good humour with which he met the asperity of her successive inquiries; but his own uneasiness, which was not the best thing in the world for his temper, showed through this superficial glitter. He looked suddenly as blank as a man can look who looks annoyed. “How in the world could I have supposed I was making it less? ”

Mrs. Beever faltered in her turn. “ To answer that question I should need to have been present at your appeal.”

Tony’s eyes put forth a fire. “ It seems to me that your answer, as it is, will do very well for a. charge of disloyalty. Do you imply that I didn’t act in good faith? ”

“Not even in my sore disappointment. But I imply that you made a gross mistake.”

Tony lifted his shoulders; with his hands in his pockets he had begun to fidget about the lawn bringing back to her as he did so the worried figure that, in the same attitude, the day of poor Julia’s death, she had seen pace the hall at the other house. “But what the deuce then was I to do? ”

“You were to let her alone.”

“Ah, but............