stoep_, thus appealed to,
looked up with a half-start. He had relapsed into the formal again.
But she understood.

"It depends," she said. "No one would grudge being disturbed for such a
reason as that."

There was a caress in the tone, latent, subtle, imperceptible to any but
himself. The voice, the attitude, the supple grace of her beautiful
form, emphasised by the occupation she was then engaged in, as indeed it
was in almost any and every movement she made, stirred him with a kind
of enchantment, an enchantment that was strange, delicious, and rather
intoxicating. He thought that he could lie there in his long cane
chair, amid the drowsy hum of bees and the far-away bleating of sheep
upon the sunny and sensuous air, and watch her for ever.

But a very much less soothing sound now rose upon the said air, in the
shape of a wild yell, quick, shrill voices, and a series of vehement
shrieks.

"My goodness! what on earth are those children about?" cried Mrs
Suffield, springing to her feet, and hurrying round to the back of the
house, where the tumult had arisen, and whence doleful howlings and the
strife of tongues still continued to flow.

"They've been scratching each other's faces, or got stung by a bee, or
something of the kind," said Mona composedly, her figure drawn up to its
full height in an attitude of unconscious grace, as she rose from her
occupation and stood for a moment with one foot on the lower step of the
_stoep_, looking half over her shoulder at the flower bed, while
calculating how much more watering it needed. Then she put down her
watering can and came up the steps.

"Hot for the time of year," she said, sweeping off her wide-brimmed
straw hat, which became her so well, and drawing off her gardening
gloves.

"Perhaps; but you looked such a vision of coolness, moving about among
the flowers, that it made up a sort of Paradise. Now, come here, Mona,
and talk to me a little. There is something about you which is the very
embodiment of all soothing properties."

A soft light grew in the hazel eyes. With a pleased smile she stepped
to the head of his couch, and placing a cool hand on his forehead for a
moment, bent down and kissed him.

"You poor invalid!" she murmured, looking down at him tenderly. "I feel
responsible for you now--you seem to belong to me--until you are well."

"In that case I am in no hurry to get well, dear," was the answer, in a
tone strangely soft as coming from