ose dark grey eyes, a LITTLE prominent possibly, and that good
colour--it's rather high now perhaps, but she will lose quite enough
of it in India--and those regular features, she would make a splendid
Britannia. Do you know, I fancy she must have a great deal of character.
Has she?'

'Any amount. And all of it good,' I responded, with private dejection.

'No faults at all?' chaffed Mrs. Morgan.

I shook my head. 'Nothing,' I said sadly, 'that I can put my finger on.
But I hope to discover a few later. The sun may bring them out.'

'Like freckles. Well, you are a lucky woman. Mine had plenty, I assure
you. Untidiness was no name for Jessie, and Mary--I'm SORRY to say that
Mary sometimes fibbed.'

'How lovable of her! Cecily's neatness is a painful example to me, and I
don't believe she would tell a fib to save my life.'

'Tell me,' said Mrs. Morgan, as the lunch-bell rang and she gathered her
occupation into her work-basket, 'who is that talking to her?'

'Oh, an old friend,' I replied easily; 'Dacres Tottenham, a dear fellow,
and most benevolent. He is trying on my behalf to reconcile her to the
life she'll have to lead in India.'

'She won't need much reconciling, if she's like most girls,' observed
Mrs. Morgan, 'but he seems to be trying very hard.'

That was quite the way I took it--on my behalf--for several days. When
people have understood you very adequately for ten years you do not
expect them to boggle at any problem you may present at the end of the
decade. I thought Dacres was moved by a fine sense of compassion. I
thought that with his admirable perception he had put a finger on the
little comedy of fruitfulness in my life that laughed so bitterly at
the tragedy of the barren woman, and was attempting, by delicate
manipulation, to make it easier. I really thought so. Then I observed
that myself had preposterously deceived me, that it wasn't like that at
all. When Mr. Tottenham joined us, Cecily and me, I saw that he listened
more than he talked, with an ear specially cocked to register any small
irony which might appear in my remarks to my daughter. Naturally he
registered more than there were, to make up perhaps for dear Cecily's
obviously not registering any. I could see, too, that he was suspicious
of any flavour of kindness; finally, to avoid the strictures of his
upper lip, which really, dear fellow, began to bore me, I talked
exclusively about the distant sails and the Red Sea littoral. When h