ss Levering jumped up. 'Lord Borrodaile!' He was standing at the
little iron gate waiting for his hostess, who had stopped to speak to
one of the gardeners. 'Wait a moment!' Vida called, and went swiftly
down the grass path. He had turned and was advancing to meet her. 'No,
come away,' she said under her breath, 'come away quickly'--(safe on the
other side of the gate)--'and talk to me! Tell me about old,
half-forgotten pictures or about young rose trees.'

'Is something the matter?'

'I'm ruffled.'

'Who has ruffled you?' His tone was as serene as it was sympathetic.

'Several people.'

'Why, I thought you were never ruffled.'

'I'm not, often.'

They turned down into a little green aisle between two dense thickets of
rhododendrons.

'It's lucky you are here,' she said irrelevantly.

He glanced at her face.

'It's not luck. It's foresight.'

'Oh, you arranged it? Well, I'm glad.'

'So am I,' he answered quietly. 'We get on rather well together,' he
added, after a moment.

She nodded half absently. 'I feel as if I'd known you for years instead
of for months,' she said.

'Yes, I have rather that feeling, too. Except that I'm always a little
nervous when I meet you again after an interval.'

'Nervous,' she frowned. 'Why nervous?'

'I'm always afraid you'll have some news for me.'

'What news?'

'Oh, the usual thing. That a pleasant friendship is going to be
interrupted if not broken by some one's carrying you off. It would be a
pity, you know.'

'Then you don't agree with Lord John.'

'Oh, I suppose you _ought_ to marry,' he said, with smiling impatience,
'and I'm very sure you will! But I shan't like it'--he wound up with an
odd little laugh--'and neither will you.'

'It's an experiment I shall never try.'

He smiled, but as he glanced at her he grew grave. 'I've heard more than
one young woman say that, but you look as if it might really be so.'

'It is so.'

He waited, and then, switching at the wild hyacinths with his stick--

'Of course,' he said, 'I have no right to suppose you are going to give
me your reasons.'

'No. That's why I shall never even consider marrying--so that I shall
not have to set out my reasons.'

He had never seen that look in her face before. He made an effort to put
aside the trouble of it, saying almost lightly--

'I often wonder why people can't be happy as they are!'

'They think of the future, I suppose.'

'There's no such thing as the future.'

'Y