eeding.

She looked back to the spot where 'Dolph rested among dogs of loftiest
race. She knew that Sir Elphinstone and Miss Sally were discussing her
while they rode, and she could hear two words Sir Elphinstone let fall.
She repeated them to herself--"Nobody's child."

She did not remember that she had once thanked her gods for it.

The rural postman carried a brass cowhorn, and made a practice of
sounding it as he mounted the road leading to Culvercoombe. Its note,
sounding through the clear morning air, aroused Tilda from her brown
study, and she ran lightly up the slope to catch him on the upper
terrace.

He handed her the day's mail--a dozen letters or more, and among them
one addressed to her. In the whole world was but one handwriting that
ever came for her; recognisable always, though with each post it grew
firmer in character.

The envelope bore an Italian stamp and a Neapolitan postmark.
Arthur Miles was a midshipman now, soon to be a second-lieutenant; his
ship, the _Indomitable_, attached to the Mediterranean fleet. She broke
the seal. . . . The letter was a boyish one, full of naval slang,
impersonal, the sort of letter growing boys write to their mothers.
But Arthur Miles had no mother; and if he wrote to his father, Tilda
knew that he wrote more formally.

"We were sent up here," the letter said, "on getting word that Vesuvius
meant to erupt badly, and that we might be useful. But the show seems
to be hanging fire, and we may be ordered back to Malta at any moment.
Half a dozen of us made up a picnic yesterday, to have a look at the
crater at close quarters. We cooked some eggs on it, to show our
unconcern, and while we were cooking them up came an American, who had
pitched camp in the foolhardiest spot. Guess why--to paint it!
Guess who he was--why, Jessup! Do you remember Jessup? He introduced
himself, and I knew him at once; but he did not know me, and I did not
enlighten him. He said that the Art of the Future must depend on the
development of wireless telegraphy, and that in the meanwhile he was
just marking time with earthquakes."

Tilda, having read thus far, looks up at the sound of horses' hoofs.
Miss Sally and Sir Elphinstone are returning from their ride.

"And, after all, why not?" Miss Sally is saying.

"The very mistake his father made!"

"Homoeopathy is one of my fads, remember."

"A nobody's child!"

"True; and so would _he_ have been, but for her."

***END