expression upon the face of Herbert when
she would insist on his going out by the side of Phyllis to feed the
peacocks on the terraces in the twilight; and she had more than once
seemed to hear his sigh of resignation as she, with a firmness which she
would take pains to develop, pleaded a headache so that he and Phyllis
might play a game of billiards together.

She soon found out that her imagination had not been prophetic.
Immediately after drinking tea--it was a few minutes past six--on the
evening of the arrival of Herbert, she went out of doors to find him and
give him a lecture on the need there was for him to refrain from waiting
about the garden far from the other guests until she, Ella, could go
on the river with him for a quiet drift before dinner; the other guests
would certainly think him worse than rude, she was ready to explain.
The explanation was not needed; she learned that Mr. Courtland had just
taken Miss Ayrton out in one of the punts.

Of course she was pleased--after an hour by the side of her husband to
perceive that Herbert had lost no time in making an effort to prove to
her how amply he recognized her object in asking him to The Mooring. But
at the same time, if pleased, she was also surprised. At any rate, she
would take good care that he did not lapse in his attentions to Phyllis;
as she knew lovers are but too apt to lapse, especially when they begin
well. She would, for instance, send him from her side in the garden
after dinner, to walk with Phyllis up to the woods where a nightingale
was said to be in the habit of singing when the lovely summer twilight
had waned into the lovely summer night. With the nightingale's song in
their ears, two ordinary young persons with no preconceived theories
on the subject of love, have been known, she was well aware, to become
lovers of the most aggressive type. Yes, she had great hopes of the
nightingale.

So, apparently, had Herbert Courtland.

After dinner there was smoking in the garden, some feeding of the
peacocks on the terraces, while the blackbirds uttered protests against
such an absorption by foreign immigrants of the bread that was baked for
native consumption. Then there was some talk of the nightingale. One man
suggested that it was a nightingale attached to a music box which the
enterprise of a local inn had hired for the summer months, sending a man
to wind it up every night for the attraction of visitors. Then it was
that Mr. Courtla