me that you've at last put your hand on a perfect governess----"

Anna, without answering, glanced away from him toward her daughter.

"It's lucky, at any rate," Darrow continued, "that Madame de Chantelle
thinks her so."

"Oh, I think very highly of her too."

"Highly enough to feel quite satisfied to leave her with Effie?"

"Yes. She's just the person for Effie. Only, of course, one never
knows...She's young, and she might take it into her head to leave us..."
After a pause she added: "I'm naturally anxious to know what you think
of her."

When they entered the house the hands of the hall clock stood within a
few minutes of the luncheon hour. Anna led Effie off to have her hair
smoothed and Darrow wandered into the oak sitting-room, which he found
untenanted. The sun lay pleasantly on its brown walls, on the scattered
books and the flowers in old porcelain vases. In his eyes lingered the
vision of the dark-haired mother mounting the stairs with her little
fair daughter. The contrast between them seemed a last touch of grace
in the complex harmony of things. He stood in the window, looking out at
the park, and brooding inwardly upon his happiness...

He was roused by Effie's voice and the scamper of her feet down the long
floors behind him.

"Here he is! Here he is!" she cried, flying over the threshold.

He turned and stooped to her with a smile, and as she caught his hand he
perceived that she was trying to draw him toward some one who had paused
behind her in the doorway, and whom he supposed to be her mother.

"HERE he is!" Effie repeated, with her sweet impatience.

The figure in the doorway came forward and Darrow, looking up, found
himself face to face with Sophy Viner. They stood still, a yard or two
apart, and looked at each other without speaking.

As they paused there, a shadow fell across one of the terrace windows,
and Owen Leath stepped whistling into the room. In his rough shooting
clothes, with the glow of exercise under his fair skin, he looked
extraordinarily light-hearted and happy. Darrow, with a quick
side-glance, noticed this, and perceived also that the glow on the
youth's cheek had deepened suddenly to red. He too stopped short, and
the three stood there motionless for a barely perceptible beat of time.
During its lapse, Darrow's eyes had turned back from Owen's face to that
of the girl between them. He had the sense that, whatever was done, it
was he who must do it, and that it mus