d no right to be
so quick-sighted. It was almost "Missish" of Rose, he told himself, to
be so ready to think his heart in danger, and to be so unnecessarily
tender of his feelings. She might wait for him to begin the attack
before she began to build up fortifications.

He was at the height of his irritation against Rose, when the three
other ladies came out on the terrace. Lady Groombridge instantly told
Mrs. Delaport Green that she knew she wished to visit the dairy, and
hustled her off through the garden. Edmund rose and smiled, with his
peculiar, paternal admiration, at Molly, whose dark looks were at their
very best set in the complete whiteness of her hat and dress. Then he
glanced after the figures that were disappearing among the rose-bushes.

"The party is not in the least what your chaperone expected; indeed, we
can hardly be dignified by the name of a party at all, but you see how
happy she is. She even enjoyed dear old Groombridge's prosing last
night, and she has been very happy in church, and now she is going to
see the dairy. The only thing that troubles her is that Lady Groombridge
has not allowed her to change her gown, and a well-regulated mind cannot
enjoy her prayers and a visit to cows in the same gown. Now suppose,"
he looked at Molly with a lazy, friendly smile, "you put on a short
skirt and come for a walk."

A little later they were walking through the woods on the hills beyond
the Castle. Perhaps he intended that Rose, who had stayed to speak to
the vicar, should find that he had not been waiting about for her
return.

"I would give a good deal to possess the cheerful philosophy of Mrs.
Delaport Green," he said, as, looking down through an opening in the
trees, they could see that little woman with her skirts gracefully held
up standing by while Lady Groombridge discoursed to the keeper of cows,
who looked sleek and prosperous and a little sulky the while.

"You would be wise to learn some of it from her," Edmund went on. "Isn't
this nice? Let us sit upon the ground, as it is dry, and feel how good
everything is. You like this sort of thing, don't you?"

Molly murmured "Yes," and sat down on a mossy bank and looked up into
the glorious blue sky and then at a tuft of large, pale primroses in the
midst of dark ground ivy, then far down to the fields where a group of
brown cows, rich in colour, stood lazily content by a blue stream that
sparkled in the sunlight. Edmund was not hard-hearted, a