hat
an elderly man wouldn't understand. He took out a second note
and pressed them both hurriedly into Isabel's palm. "There! now
run off and don't ask me for another penny for the next
twelvemonth!" he exclaimed, beaming over his generosity though
more than half ashamed of it. "You extravagant puss, you! dear,
dear, who'd have a daughter?"

Isabel gave him a rather hasty though warm embrace (she was
terribly afraid that his conscience would prick him and that he
would take the second note away again), and flew out of the
window faster than she had come in. The clock was striking a
quarter past one, and she had to scamper down to Chapman's to buy
the dress, and a length of lilac ribbon for a sash, and a packet
of bronze hairpins, and be back in time to lay the cloth for two
o'clock lunch. If it is only for idle hands that Satan finds
mischief, he could not have had much satisfaction out of Isabel
Stafford.

Soon after four Mrs. Clowes stepped from her car, shook out her
soft flounces, and led the way across the lawn, Lawrence Hyde in
attendance. The vicarage was an old-fashioned house too large
for the living, its long front, dotted with rosebushes, rising up
honey-coloured against the clear green of a beech grove. There
are grand houses that one sees at once will never be comfortable,
and there are unpretentious houses that promise to be cool in
summer and warm in winter and restful all the year round: of such
was Chilmark vicarage, sunning itself in the afternoon clearness,
while faded green sunblinds filled the interior with verdant
shadow, and the smell of sweetbrier and Japanese honeysuckle
breathed round the rough-cast walls.

Isabel had laid tea on the lawn, and Mrs. Clowes smiled to herself
when she saw seven worn deck chairs drawn up round the table; she was
always secretly amused at Isabel in her character of hostess, at the
naive natural confidence with which the young lady scattered
invitations and dispensed hospitality. But when Isabel came forward
Laura's covert smile passed into irrepressible surprise. She raised
her eyebrows at Isabel, who replied by an almost imperceptible but
triumphant nod. In her white and mauve embroidered muslin, her dark
hair accurately parted at the side of her head and drawn back into
what she called a soup plate of plaits, Isabel no longer threatened
to be pretty. Impelled by that singularly pure benevolence which a
woman who has ceased to hope for happiness fe