some one more than usually
self-possessed and cynical revived in her mind; and those maliciously
drooping lids were obliterating the effect of the brown eyes. Sitting by
herself in the oriel window, Pauline was nearly sure she did not like
him. He had no business to be at the Rectory when Richard was building a
bridge out in India; and now here was Margaret strolling graciously in,
and almost at once obviously knowing so well how to get on with this
idler. Oh, positively she disliked him. So cold and so cruel was that
mouth, and so vain he was, as he sat there bending forward over
hand-clasped, long, stupid, crossed legs. What right had he to laugh
with Margaret about their father's visit? This stranger had assuredly
never appreciated him. He was come here to spoil the happiness of
Wychford, to destroy the immemorial perfection of life at the Rectory.
And why would he keep looking up at herself? Margaret could be pleasant
to anybody, but this intruder would soon find that she herself was loyal
to the absent. Pauline wished that, when he met them all on that night
of the moon, she had been so horridly rude as to make him avoid the
family for ever. How could Margaret sit there talking so unconcernedly,
when Richard might be dying of sunstroke at this very moment? Margaret
was heartless, and this stranger with his drawl and his undergraduate
affectation would encourage her to sneer at everything.

"What's the matter, Pauline dearest?" her mother turned round to ask.

"Nothing," answered Pauline, biting her lips to keep back surely the
most unreasonable tears she had ever felt were springing.

"You're not cross with me for calling you a landslide?" persisted Mrs.
Grey, smiling at her from the midst of a glory momentarily shed by a
stormy ray of sunshine.

"Oh, Mother," said Pauline, now fairly in the midway between laughter
and tears. "It was an avalanche you called me."

"Why do you always sit near a window?" asked Monica.

"She always rushes into a corner," said Margaret.

Pauline jumped up from her chair and would have run out of the room
forthwith; but in passing the first table she knocked from it a silver
bowl of potpourri and scattered the contents over the carpet. Down she
knelt to hide her confusion and repair the damage, and at the same
moment Guy plunged down beside her to help. She caught his eyes so
tenderly humorous that she too laughed.

"I think it must be my fault," he said. "Don't you remember how