"Thursday morning? Is it possible that this is Thursday morning? And I must run up to London on Saturday," said Lavendar to himself as he finished dressing by the open window. He looked up the day of the week in his calendar first, in order to make quite sure of the fact. Yes, there was no doubt at all that it was Thursday. His sense of time must have suffered some strange confusion; in one way it seemed only an hour ago that he had arrived from the clangour and darkness of London to the silence of the country, the cuckoos calling across the river between the wooded hills, and the April sunshine on the orchard trees; in another, years might have passed since the moment when he first saw Robinette Loring sitting under Mrs. Prettyman's plum tree.

"Eight days have we spent together in this house, and yet since that time when we first crossed in the boat, I've never been more than half an hour alone with her," he thought. "There are only three other people in the house after all, but they seem to have the power of multiplying themselves like the loaves and fishes (only when they're not wanted) so that we're eternally in a crowd. That boy particularly! I like Carnaby, if he could get it into his thick head that his presence isn't always necessary; it must bother Mrs. Loring too; he's quite off his head about her if she only knew it. However, it's my last day very likely, and if I have to outwit Machiavelli I'll manage it somehow! Surely one lame old woman, and a torpid machine for knitting and writing notes like Miss Smeardon, can't want to be out of doors all day. Hang that boy, though! He'll come anywhere." Here he stopped and sat down suddenly at the dressing-table, covering his face with his hands in comic despair. "Mrs. Loring can't like it! She must be doing it on purpose, avoiding being alone with me because she sees I admire her," he sighed. "After all why should I ever suppose that I interest her as much as she does me?"

No one could have told from Lavendar's face, when he appeared fresh and smiling at the breakfast table half an hour later, that he was hatching any deep-laid schemes.

Robinette entered the dining room five minutes late, as usual, pretty as a pink, breathless with hurrying. She wore a white dress again, with one rose stuck at her waistband, "A little tribute from the gardener," she said, as she noticed Lavendar glance at it. She went rapidly around the table shaking hands, and gave Carnaby's red cheeks a pinch in passing that made Lavendar long to tweak the boy's ear.

"Good morning, all!" she said cheerily, "and how is my first cousin once removed? Is he going to Weston with me this morning to buy hairpins?"

"He is!" Carnaby answered joyfully, between mouthfuls of bacon and eggs. "He has been out of hairpins for a week."

"Does he need tapes and buttons also?" asked Robinette, taking the piece of muffin from his hand and buttering it for herself; an act highly disapproved of by Mrs. de Tracy, who hurriedly requested Bates to pass the bread.

"He needs everything you need," Carnaby said with heightened colour.

"My hair is giving me a good deal of trouble, lately," remarked Lavendar, passing his hand over a thickly thatched head.

"I have an excellent American tonic that I will give you after breakfast," said Robinette roguishly. "You need to apply it with a brush at ten, eleven, and twelve o'clock, sitting in the sun continuously between those hours so that the scalp may be well invigorated. Carnaby, will you buy me butter scotch and lemonade and oranges in Weston?"

"I will, if Grandmother'll increase my allowance," said Carnaby malevolently, "for I need every penny I've got in hand for the hairpins."

"I hope you are not hungry, Robinetta," said Mrs. de Tracy, "that you have to buy food in Weston."

"No, indeed," said Robinette, "I was only longing to test Carnaby's generosity and educate him in buying trifles for pretty ladies."

"He can probably be relied on to educate himself in that line when the time comes," Mrs. de Tracy remarked; "and now if you have all finished talking about hair, I will take up my breakfast again."

"Oh, Aunt de Tracy, I am so sorry if it wasn't a nice subject, but I never thought. Anyway I only talked about hairpins; it was Mr. Lavendar who introduced hair into the conversation; wasn't it, Middy dear?"

Lavendar thought he could have annihilated them both for their open comradeship, their obvious delight in each other's society. Was he to be put on the shelf like a dry old bachelor? Not he! He would circumvent them in some way or another, although the role of gooseberry was new to him.

The two young people set off in high spirits, and Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon watched them as they walked down the avenue on their way to the station, their clasped hands swinging in a merry rhythm as they hummed a bit of the last popular song.

"I hope Robinetta will not Americanize Carnaby," said Mrs. de Tracy. "He seems so foolishly elated, so feverishly gay all at once. Her manner is too informal; Carnaby requires constant repression."

"Perhaps his temperature has not returned to normal since his attack of quinsy," Miss Smeardon observed, reassuringly.

Meanwhile Lavendar sat in Admiral de Tracy's old smoking room for half an hour writing letters. Every time that he glanced up from his work, and he did so pretty often, his eyes fell on a picture that hung upon the opposite wall. It was the copy of Sir Joshua's "Robinetta" made long ago and just presented to its namesake.

In the portrait the girl's hair was a still brighter gold; yet certainly there was a likeness somewhere about it, he thought; partly in the expression, partly in the broad low forehead, and the eyes that looked as if they were seeing fairies.

Of course to his mind Mrs. Loring was a hundred times more lovely than Sir Joshua's famous girl with a robin. He felt very ill-used because Robinette and Carnaby had deliberately gone for an excursion without him and had left him toiling over business papers when they had gone off to enjoy themselves.

How bright it was out there in the sunshine, to be sure! And why should it be Carnaby, not he, who was by this time walking along the sea front of Weston, and watching the breeze flutter Robinette's scarf and bring a brighter colour to her lips?

There! the last words were written, and taking up his bunch of letters, watch in hand, he sought Mrs. de Tracy, and explained that he would bicycle to Weston and catch the London post himself.

"I'll send William"--she began; but Lavendar hastily assured her that he should enjoy the ride, and hurried off in triumph. Miss Smeardon smiled an acid smile as she watched him go. "He has forgotten all about poor Miss Meredith, I suppose," she murmured. "Yet it was not so long ago that they were supposed to be all in all to each other!"

"It was a foolish engagement, Miss Smeardon," said Mrs. de Tracy in a cold voice. "I never thought the girl was suited to Mark, and I understand that old Mr. Lavendar was relieved when the whole thing came to an end."

"Quite so; certainly; no doubt Miss Meredith would never have made him happy," said Miss Smeardon at once, "though it is always more agreeable when the lady discovers the fact first. In this case she confessed openly that Mr. Lavendar broke her heart with his indifference."

"She was an ill-bred young woman," said Mrs. de Tracy, as if the subject were now closed. "However, I hope that the son of my family solicitor would think it only proper to pay a certain amount of attention to the Admiral's niece, were she ever so obnoxious to him."

Miss Smeardon made no audible reply, but her thoughts were to the effect that never was an obnoxious duty performed by any man with a better grace.

The sea front at Weston was the most prosaic scene in the world, a long esplanade with an asphalt path running its full length, and ugly jerrybuilt houses glaring out upon it, a gimcrack pier with a gingerbread sort of band-stand and glass house at the end;--all that could have been done to ruin nature had been determinedly done there. But you cannot ruin a spring day, nor youth, nor the colour of the sea. Along the level shore, the placid waves swept and broke, and then gathered up their white skirts, and retreated to return with the same musical laugh. Children and dogs played about on the wet sands. The wind blew freshly and the sea stretched all one pure blue, till it met on the horizon with the bluer skies.

Weston seemed to Lavendar a very fresh and delightful spot at that moment, although had he been in a different mood its sordidness only would have struck him. Yes, there they were in the distance; he knew Robinette's white dress and the figure of the boy beside her. Hang that boy! Were they really going to buy hairpins? If so, then a hair-dresser's he must find. Lavendar turned up the little street that led from the sea-front, scanning all the signs--Boots--Dairies--Vegetable shops--Heavens! were there nothing but vegetable and boot shops in Weston? Boots again. At last a Hairdresser; Lavendar stood in the doorway until he made sure that Robinette and the middy had turned in that direction, and then he boldly entered the shop.

To his horror he found himself confronted by a smiling young woman, whose own very marvellous erection of hair made him think she must be used as an advertisement for the goods she supplied.

In another moment Robinette and the boy would be upon him, and he must be found deep in fictitious business. He cast one agonized glance at the mysteries of the toilet that surrounded him on every side, then clearing his throat, he said modestly but firmly, that he wanted to buy a pair of curling tongs for a lady.

"These are the thing if you wish a Marcel wave," was the reply, "but just for an ordinary crimp we sell a good many of the plain ones."

"Yes, thank you. They will do; the lady--my sister, also wished--"

"A little 'addition,' was it, sir?" she moved smilingly to a drawer. "A few pin curls are very easily adjusted, or would our guinea switch--"

At this moment the boy and Robinette entered the shop. Lavendar was paying for the curling tongs, and not a muscle of his face relaxed. "Oh, here you are. I have just finished my business," he said, turning round, "I thought we might encounter one another somewhere!"

Robinette and Carnaby exchanged knowing glances of which Lavendar was perfectly conscious, but he stood by while Mrs. Loring bought her hairpins, and Carnaby endeavoured to persuade her to invest in a few "pin curls." "Not an hour before it is absolutely necessary, Middy dear," she said; "then I shall bear it as bravely as I can. Come now, carry the hairpins for me, and let me take Mr. Lavendar out of this shop, or he will be te............