orgiven me," she
whispered as she stood in the perfumed darkness, with a wandering
summer wind playing refreshingly round her, and tears from some hidden
fount of sadness stole down her cheeks. "If he were my own child he
could not be dearer to me. I remember my stepmother once told me so.
'My boy has two mothers, Dinah,' these were her very words. Well, he is
my Son of Consolation," and Dinah heaved a gentle sigh, as though the
motherhood within her, the divine maternal instinct inherent in all
true women, felt itself satisfied.

At breakfast the next morning Malcolm proffered his services; but
Elizabeth assured him that Cedric and Johnson would do all that was
required, so he spent his morning indolently down by the Pool--reading
and indulging in his favourite daydreams--until Cedric joined him.

Cedric looked heated and tired.

"I never saw such a person as Betty for getting work out of a fellow,"
he grumbled. "She would do splendidly on a rice plantation--wouldn't
the niggers fly just! Why, she set me rolling the tennis lawn, because
she wanted Johnson; and then I had to bicycle over to Rotherwood for
something that had been forgotten. I took it out in cool drinks though,
I can tell you. My word, Bet does know how to make prime claret
cup"--and Cedric smacked his lips with the air of a veteran gourmand;
and then he sparred at Malcolm, and called him an absent-minded beggar,
and asked if he had finished his ode to the naiad of the Pool, and made
sundry other aggravating remarks, which proved that he was in excellent
spirits and only wanted to find a safety-valve.

Just before the first carriage drove up, Malcolm, who was standing by
Elizabeth on the terrace, suggested that she and Mr. Carlyon should
give him and Cedric their revenge; but she told him quite seriously
that they must not think of it for the present.

"The sets are all arranged, and Dinah and I must devote ourselves to
our guests," she remarked; and as this was only reasonable, Malcolm
said no more.

"I am going to introduce you to Tina Ross," she continued. "There she
and her sister Patty are just coming up the drive now. She is a very
good player, and your opponents will be Nora Brent and Mr. Carlyon."

"We are under orders, Herrick," observed David with mock humility; and
then the introduction was made and the little white and blue fairy
walked off demurely enough with Malcolm.

Tina Ross was certainly a very pretty girl; she had one of those