, there is not a woman in the house!"

Again she listened. She gave a little hoarse cry, and Wingrave started.
Out in the hall a girl's clear laugh rang like a note of music to their
ears.

"You lie!" she cried fiercely. "You lie! I will know who she is."

Suddenly the door was thrown open! Juliet stood there, her hands full of
roses, her face flushed and brilliant with smiles.

"How delightful to find you here!" she exclaimed, coming swiftly across
to Wingrave. "I do hope you won't mind my coming. Normandy is off, and I
have nowhere else to go."

She saw Lady Ruth and stopped.

"Oh! I beg your pardon!" she exclaimed. "I did not know."

"This is Lady Ruth Barrington," Wingrave said; "my ward, Miss Juliet
Lundy."

"Your--ward?" Lady Ruth said, gazing at her intently.

Juliet nodded.

"Sir Wingrave has been very kind to me since I was a child," she said
softly. "He has let me live here with Mrs. Tresfarwin, and I am afraid
I sometimes forget that it is not really my home. Am I in the way?" she
asked, looking wistfully towards Wingrave.

"By no means!" he exclaimed. "Lady Ruth is just going. Will you see that
she has some tea or something?"

Lady Ruth laughed quietly.

"I think," she said, "that it is I who am in the way! I should love
some tea, if there is time, but whatever happens, I must not miss that
train."

A DREAM OF PARADISE

It seemed to Wingrave that the days which followed formed a sort of
hiatus in his life--an interlude during which some other man in his
place, and in his image, played the game of life to a long-forgotten
tune. He moved through the hours as a man in a maze, unrecognizable to
himself, half unconscious, half heedless of the fact that the garments
of his carefully cultivated antagonism to the world and to his fellows
had slipped very easily from his unresisting shoulders. The glory of
a perfect English midsummer lay like a golden spell upon the land. The
moors were purple with heather, touched here and there with the fire of
the flaming gorse, the wind blew always from the west, the gardens were
ablaze with slowly bursting rhododendrons. Every gleam of coloring,
every breath of perfume, seemed to carry him unresistingly back to the
days of his boyhood. He fished once more in the trout streams; he threw
away his stick, and tramped or rode with Juliet across the moors. At
night time she sang or played with the windows open, Wingrave himself
out of sight under the cedar tr