trow:
The rose is budding fain."

Each flower in the sunlit garden is holding up its head, and breathing
fragrant sighs as the hours slip by, unheeded, yet full of a vague
delight.

Miss Peyton, in her white gown, and with some soft rich roses lying on
her lap, is leaning back in a low chair in the deep embrasure of the
window, making a poor attempt at working.

Her father, with a pencil in his hand, and some huge volumes spread
out before him, is making a few desultory notes. Into the library--the
coseyest, if not the handsomest, room at Gowran--the hot sun is
rushing, dancing lightly over statuettes and pictures, and lingering
with pardonable delay upon Clarissa's bowed head.

"Who is this coming up the avenue?" she says, presently, in slow,
sleepy tones, that suit the day. "It is--no, it isn't--and yet it
is--it must be James Scrope!"

"I dare say. He was to have returned yesterday. He would come here as
soon as possible, of course." Rising, he joins her at the window, and
watches the coming visitor as he walks his horse leisurely down the
drive.

"What a dear little modest speech!" says Miss Peyton, maliciously.
"Now, if I had been the author of it, I know some one who would have
called me vain! But I will generously let that pass. How brown Jim has
grown! Has he not?"

"Has he? I can scarcely see so far. What clear eyes you must have,
child, and what a faithful memory to recollect him without hesitation,
after all these years!"

"I never forget," says Clarissa, simply, which is quite the truth.
"And he has altered hardly anything. He was always so old, you know,
he really couldn't grow much older. What is his age now, papa?
Ninety?"

"Something over thirty, I fancy," says papa, uncertainly.

"Oh, nonsense!" says Miss Peyton. "Surely you romance, or else you are
an invaluable friend. When I grow brown and withered, I hope you will
prove equally good to me. I shall expect you to say all sorts of
impossible things, and not to blush when saying them. Ah!--here is Sir
James" as the door opens, and Scrope--healthy and bronzed from
foreign travel--enters quietly, staid and calm as ever.

When he has shaken hands with, and been warmly welcomed by, Mr.
Peyton, he turns with some diffidence towards the girl in the clinging
white gown, who is smiling at him from the window, with warm red lips,
half parted and some faint amusement in her friendly eyes.

"Why, you have forgotten me," she says, presently, in