be dragged out of such a silent enigmatical person as
yourself, I should like to have a little talk with you."

I could not help liking him. His keen eyes were kindly, though his face
was grave.

"What do you want to talk about?" I said bluntly.

"What an unnecessary question. What can I want to talk about except
Emmy?"

I was silent. I felt more uncomfortable about the whole affair than I
had done yet, and that was saying a good deal.

Mr. Kingston led the way down a little track to a place where the trees
grew so close together that the murderous scythes had not been able to
get in among them. Here the bracken had been unmolested, and was going
unharassed through all its most gorgeous pageant. Great fronds of ivory
white, of palest gold, of brownest gold, of reddest gold upreared
themselves among the purple waves of the heather, wearing the stray
flecks of the sunshine like jewels on their breasts. We sat down on a
fallen tree round which the bracken had wrapped its splendour.

"How extraordinarily beautiful it is!" he said, more to himself than to
me, putting out his long, artistic hand, gnarled and hardened with work,
and touching a pale frond with a reverent finger. "I am glad to have
seen it once more. It is twenty-five years since I have seen an English
autumn."

There was a moment's silence, and then he went on without any change of
tone:

"And you are thinking, you sad-faced, downright little woman who are so
afraid that I am going to make your dear Aunt Emmy unhappy, you are
thinking that you did not take a precarious seat on this trunk in order
to hear a possible enemy descant on the beauties of nature."

I was astonished at his penetration. My own experience, gleaned entirely
from the genial little egotist whose wife I was, had taught me that men
never noticed anything. I had had no idea that I had shown the fear of
him which I felt.

"And yet you are my only possible ally," he went on, "my only helper, if
you are willing to help me, in the somewhat difficult task which I have
in hand."

"You mean, marrying my aunt?" I said.

"No," he said, looking at me with a kindness which made me ready to sink
into the ground with shame. "I can do _that_ without assistance. Emmy,
God bless her! has been ready to marry me any time these twenty-five
years, and, poor soul, she is ready now. She has not the faintest idea
what she would be in for if she did, but she is ready to risk it."

I was silent. I was