mmission as Mrs. Loring's escort. It
sounds a very agreeable one!"

"You have no time to lose," said Mrs. de Tracy with a glance at the
clock.

VII

A CROSS-EXAMINATION

Lavendar escaped from the house, where, even in the smoke-room, it
seemed unregenerate to light a cigar, and took the path to the shore.

"I wonder if one woman staying in a house full of men would find life
as depressing as I do cooped up here under precisely opposite
circumstances," he thought, as he made his way through the little
churchyard. "It cannot be the atmosphere of femininity that bores me,
however, for Mrs. de Tracy has a strongly masculine flavour and Miss
Smeardon is as nearly neuter as a person can be."

He took a couple of oars from the boat-house as he passed, and going
to the little landing stage untied the boat and started for the
farther shore.

It was good to feel the water parting under his vigorous strokes and
delightful to exert his strength after the hours of stifled irritation
at the Manor. It was a bright, calm close of day, when in the rarefied
evening air each sound began to acquire the sharpness that marks the
hour. He could hear the rush of the waters behind the boat and the
voices of the fishers farther up the stream. As he drew up to the bank
and took in his oars the stillness was so great that you could have
heard a pin fall, when suddenly from a tree above him a bird broke
into one little finished song and then was still, as if it had uttered
all it wished to say.

"What a heavenly evening!" thought Lavendar, "and what a lovely spot!
That must be the cottage just above me. Mrs. de Tracy said I should
know it by the plum tree. Ah, there it is!" Tying up the boat he
sprang up the steps and walked along the flagged path. The plum tree
these last few days had begun to look its fairest. The blossoms did
not yet conceal the leaves, but it was a very bower of beauty already.
There was a little table spread for tea under its branches, and an old
woman like thousands of old women in thousands of cottages all over
England, was sitting behind it, precisely as if she had been a
coloured illustration in a summer number of an English weekly. She was
on the typical bench in the typical attitude, but instead of the
typical old man in a clean smock frock who should have occupied the
end of the bench, there sat beside her a distinctly lovely young
woman. What struck Lavendar was the wealth of colour she brought into