inued, as though it were a subject he loved, "She has a concrete
view upon every question; her critical faculty is marvelous. She never
lays down the law, but if you ask her, you have your answer in a
nutshell, the simplest truth, which it always appears to her so strange
that you have not seen all the time."

"What is her parentage? Heredity plays so large a part in these things,"
Mr. Derringham asked.

"The result of a passionate love-match between distant cousins of that
fine old race, I believe. Timothy La Sarthe was at Oxford before your
day, but not under me--a brilliant, enchanting fellow, drowned while
yachting when my little friend was only a few months old."

"And the mother?"

"Married again to pay his debts, to a worthy stockbroker, almost
immediately, I believe. She paid the debt with herself and died after
having three children for him in a few years."

"So your protegee lives with those cameos of the Victorian era we dined
with, and never sees the outside world?"

"Never--from one year's end to another."

"What a fate!" and John Derringham stretched out his arms. "Ye gods,
what a fate!"

And again Cheiron smiled, raising his bushy left brow.

Halcyone, meanwhile, was walking with firm certain steps across the
park, where the dusk had fallen. The turbulent Boreas blew in her face,
and she stopped and took off her soft cap and unplaited her hair so that
it flew out in a cloud as the wind rushed through it. This sensation was
a great pleasure to her, and when she came to a rising ground, a kind of
knoll where the view of the country was vast and superb, she paused
again and took in great deep breaths. She was drawing all the forces of
the air into her being and quivered presently with the joy of it.

She could see as only those who are accustomed to the dark can. She was
aware of all the outlines of golden bracken at her feet and the head of
a buck peeping from the copse near. The sky was a passionate,
tempestuous mass of angry clouds scudding over the deep blue, where an
evening star could be seen peeping out.

"Bring me your force and strength, that I may grow noble and beautiful,
dear wind," she said aloud. "I want to be near him when he comes again,"
and then she ran and jumped the uneven places, while she hummed a
strange song.

And Jeb Hart and Joseph Gubbs, the poachers, saw her, as she passed
within a yard of where they lay setting their snares, and Gubbs, who was
a good Catholic from