im, I think he's an honest man. It's only behind his back that I
have any doubts about him; when he's there face to face with me I
succumb to his charm. I can believe nothing to his discredit.'

At that moment they saw Lucy walking towards them. Dick Lomas got up and
stood at the window. Mrs. Crowley, motionless, watched her from her
chair. They were both silent. A smile of sympathy played on Mrs.
Crowley's lips, and her heart went out to the girl who had undergone so
much. A vague memory came back to her, and for a moment she was puzzled;
but then she hit upon the idea that had hovered about her mind, and she
remembered distinctly the admirable picture by John Furse at Millbank,
which is called _Diana of the Uplands_. It had pleased her always, not
only because of its beauty and the fine power of the painter, but
because it seemed to her as it were a synthesis of the English spirit.
Her nationality gave her an interest in the observation of this, and her
wide, systematic reading the power to compare and analyse. This portrait
of a young woman holding two hounds in leash, the wind of the northern
moor on which she stands, blowing her skirts and outlining her lithe
figure, seemed to Mrs. Crowley admirably to follow in the tradition of
the eighteenth century. And as Reynolds and Gainsborough, with their
elegant ladies in powdered hair and high-waisted gowns, standing in
leafy, woodland scenes, had given a picture of England in the age of
Reason, well-bred and beautiful, artificial and a little airless, so had
Furse in this represented the England of to-day. It was an England that
valued cleanliness above all things, of the body and of the spirit, an
England that loved the open air and feared not the wildness of nature
nor the violence of the elements. And Mrs. Crowley had lived long enough
in the land of her fathers to know that this was a true England, simple
and honest; narrow perhaps, and prejudiced, but strong, brave, and of
great ideals. The girl who stood on that upland, looking so candidly out
of her blue eyes, was a true descendant of the ladies that Sir Joshua
painted, but she had a bath every morning, loved her dogs, and wore a
short, serviceable skirt. With an inward smile, Mrs. Crowley
acknowledged that she was probably bored by Emerson and ignorant of
English literature; but for the moment she was willing to pardon these
failings in her admiration for the character and all it typified.

Lucy came in, and Mrs.