easant to lie there in the shadow of the lime that
afternoon, and listen to the mild fooling, and Ralph forgot his
manners, and almost his errand too, and never offered to move. The grass
began to turn golden as the sun slanted to the West, and the birds began
to stir after the heat of the day, and to chirp from tree to tree. A
hundred yards away the river twinkled in the sun, seen beyond the trees
and the house, and the voices of the boatmen came, softened by distance
and water, as they plied up and down the flowing highway. Once a barge
went past under the Battersea bank, with music playing in the stern, and
Ralph raised himself on his elbow to watch it as it went down the stream
with flags flying behind, and the rhythmical throb of the row-locks
sounding time to the dancing melody.

Ralph did his best to fall in with the humour of the day, and told a
good story or two in his slow voice--among them one of his mother
exercising her gift of impressive silence towards a tiresome chatterbox
of a man, with such effect that the conversationalist's words died on
his lips, after the third or fourth pause made for applause and comment.
He told the story well, and Lady Torridon seemed to move among them, her
skirts dragging majestically on the grass, and her steady, sombre face
looking down on them all beneath half-closed languid eye-lids.

"He has never been near us again," said Ralph, "but he never fails to
ask after my mother's distressing illness when I meet him in town."

He was a little astonished at himself as he talked, for he was not
accustomed to take such pains to please, but he was conscious that
though he looked round at the faces, and addressed himself to More, he
was really watching for the effect on the girl who sat behind. He was
aware of every movement that she made; he knew when she tossed the ring
on the little sleeping brown body of the dog that had barked at him
earlier in the day, and set to work upon another. She slipped that on
her finger when she had done, and turned her hand this way and that, her
fingers bent back, a ruby catching the light as she did so, looking at
the effect of the green circle against the whiteness. But he never
looked at her again, except once when she asked him some question, and
then he looked her straight in her black eyes as he answered.

A bell sounded out at last again from the tower, and startled him. He
got up quickly.

"I am ashamed," he said smiling, "how dare I sta