n her!"

"Don't be a fool, Blades!" Owen spoke angrily now. "If I think Miss
Gibbs good enough to be my wife that's quite sufficient for everyone.
After all, I'm not such a great catch," he added bitterly.

"Nay, Mr. Owen, don't be vexed with me!" Too late the old woman
regretted her foolish words. "I'm growing old, and maybe I'm in my
dotage ... ah, he's gone--I've driven the lad away with my folly!"

It was indeed so. Owen had flung out of the door angrily; and as she
listened, half-afraid, she heard his steps receding down the passage
towards the hall. There was impatience in his very tread; for, truth to
tell, Owen felt a kind of hot anger welling in his heart as he
remembered the words she had spoken.

At first he was merely annoyed at what he called her
presumption--induced, he supposed, by her long connection with the
family. But suddenly a feeling of vague uneasiness descended upon him,
and he paused before going out to join Toni in the car.

"She only saw Toni for a moment--barely heard her speak--and yet she
speaks as though I were making an unsuitable marriage." He frowned
thoughtfully, anger dying before some feeling whose nature he could not,
yet, recognize. "I wonder--what could she mean?"

He stood in the quiet hall, fighting down a host of surmises, of
unwelcome doubts which sprang, it would seem, out of the twilight,
brought to birth by an old woman's homely words; and in those
illuminating seconds Owen allowed himself to wonder whether, after all,
he had committed an action which he would find cause to regret.

But somehow the idea seemed a treachery towards the girl who sat waiting
so trustfully, so happily for his coming; and with a sudden uplifting of
his head, Owen went resolutely out to the car.

* * * * *

But Mrs. Blades, left alone, shod a few of the difficult tears of age as
she went over the little scene. She felt suddenly old; and for the first
time in her busy, self-satisfied life she questioned her own wisdom.

Then she too shook off her uncomfortable thoughts, and calling the rosy
Maggie to her, delivered into her hands the Ten Little Ladies, who still
waited patiently upon the tray for their nightly release.

CHAPTER VIII

On a beautiful midsummer morning Antonia Rose crept softly down the
broad old staircase of Greenriver and crossed the hall with so
fairy-light a tread that never a soul in the house could hear a
footstep.

It was v