the Dean.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Ted, taking up a photo in a glass frame,
hand-painted, "here's old Hardy! What on earth is he doing here?"

Audrey blushed, but answered with unruffled calm.

"Vincent? Oh, he's a family portrait too. He's my cousin--first cousin,
you know."

"What are you going to do with _him_?"

"I--I hardly know."

She took the photo out of his hands and examined it carefully back and
front. Then she looked at Ted.

"What _shall_ I do with him? Is he to go too?"

"Well, I suppose he ought to. He's all very well in his own line,
but--from an artistic point of view--he's not exactly--decorative."

"Poor old Vincent! No, he's not."

And Vincent was turned face downward among the ruins of the cosy corner,
and Audrey and Ted rested from their labours.

When Ted had gone, the very first thing Audrey did was to get a map and
to look out the Rocky Mountains. There they were, to be sure, just as
Vincent had described them, a great high wall dividing the continent. At
that moment Hardy was kneeling on the floor of his little shanty, busy
sorting bearskins and thinking of Audrey and bears. He had had splendid
sport--that is, he had succeeded in killing a grizzly just before the
grizzly killed him. How nervous Audrey would feel when she got the
letter describing that encounter! Then he chose the best and fluffiest
bearskin to make a nice warm cape for her, and amused himself by
picturing her small oval chin nestling in the brown fur. And then he
fell to wondering what she was doing now.

He would have been delighted if he could have seen her poring over that
map with her pencilled eyebrows knit, while she traced the jagged
outlines of the Rockies with her finger-nail, congratulating herself on
the height of that magnificent range.

Yes, there was a great deal between her and her cousin Mr. Hardy.

CHAPTER VI

One fine morning in latter spring, about four months after the day of
the transformation scene in Audrey's drawing-room, Ted Haviland was
lying on his back sunning himself on the leads. There are many lovelier
places even in London than the leads of No. 12 Devon Street, Pimlico,
but none more favourable to high and solitary thinking. Here the roar of
traffic is subdued to a murmur hardly greater than the stir of country
woods on a warm spring morning--a murmur less obtrusive, because more
monotonous. It is the place of all others for one absorbed in
metaphysical speculation, or cul