what it means, I would call her that."

"It will do," said Cheiron.

"Aphrodite--Aphrodite," she repeated it over and over. "It must mean
kind and tender, and soft and sweet, and beautiful and glorious, and
making you think of noble things, and making you feel perfectly happy
and warmed and comforted and blessed. Is it all that?"

"It could be--and more," said Cheiron.

"Then I will name her so."

After this there was a long silence. Mr. Carlyon would not interrupt
what was evidently a serious moment to his little friend. He waited, and
then presently he turned the channel of her thoughts by asking her if
she thought he might call on her Aunts that afternoon.

Halcyone hesitated a second.

"We hardly ever have visitors. Aunt Ginevra has always said one must not
receive what one cannot return, and they have no carriage or horses now,
so they never see anyone. Aunt Roberta would, but Aunt Ginevra does not
let her, and she often says in the last ten years they have quite
dropped out of everything. I do not know what that means altogether,
because I do not know what there was to drop out of. I have scarcely
ever been beyond the park, and there do not seem to be any big houses
for miles--do there?--except Wendover, but it is shut up; it has been
for twenty years."

"Then you think the Misses La Sarthe might not receive me?"

"You could try, of course. You have not a carriage. If you just walked
it would make it even. Shall I tell them you are coming? I had better,
perhaps."

"Yes, this afternoon."

And if Halcyone had known it, she was receiving an unheard-of
compliment! The hermit Carlyon--the old Oxford Professor of Greek, who
had come to this out-of-the-way corner because he had been assured by
the agent there would be no sort of society around him--now intended to
put on a tall hat and frock coat, and make a formal call on two maiden
ladies--all for the sake of a child of twelve years, with serious gray
eyes--and a soul!

CHAPTER IV

In her heart of hearts Miss Roberta felt fluttered as she walked across
the empty hall to the Italian parlor behind her sterner sister, to
receive their guest. He would come in the afternoon, Halcyone had said.
That meant about three o'clock, and it behooved ladies expecting a
gentleman to be at ease at some pretty fancy work when he should be
announced.

The village was two miles beyond the lime lodge gates, and for the last
eight years rheumatism in the knee had