ning or royalty, do you think?
The ----s may have sent for him. I know he knows them. But it's
characteristic. He makes a fuss about you, so that you think you're
his life or death; and then you find out--not at all! You simply don't
exist--that's all. What do you think?"

"I don't think that we don't exist," she said. "I think that something
important has happened."

"Oh, well," said James, "one had got into the way of thinking that one
was important oneself. D----d cool, I call it."

There had been a moment when Lucy knew anger; but that had soon
passed. She knew that she was bitterly disappointed, and found a
rueful kind of happiness in discovering how bitterly. She had reached
the stage where complete happiness seems to be rooted in
self-surrender. In a curious kind of way the more she suffered the
more surely she could pinch herself on the chin and say, "My dear, you
are caught." There was comfort in this--and Martley itself, house,
gardens, woodlands, the lake, the vistas of the purple wolds of forest
country, all contributed to her enchaining. Luncheon passed off well
under Vera Nugent's vivacious brown eyes, which could not penetrate
the gentle mask of Lucy's manner. Nugent the husband was a sleepy,
good-humoured giant; Lord Considine, whose beard was too long, and
jacket-sleeves much too short--as were his trousers--"his so-called
trousers," as James put it in his scorn--talked fiercely about
birds'-nests and engaged Lucy for the whole afternoon. This was not
allowed him by his sister-in-law, who had other more sociable plans,
but the good man had his pleasure of a docile listener after tea, took
her for a great walk in the woods, and exhibited nearly all his
treasures, though, as he said, she should have been there six weeks
earlier. Alas, if she had been, she would have had a more open mind
to give to the birds and their affairs.

After dinner, when they were on the terrace under the stars, he
returned to his subject. There were nightingales, it seemed. What did
Mrs. Macartney say to that? It appeared that six miles away the
nightingale was an unknown fowl. Here, of course, they were
legionaries. You might hear six at a time: two triangles of them. Did
she know that they sang in triangles? She did not. Very well, then:
what did she say? What about shoes--a cloak--a shawl? All these things
could be brought. Lucy said that she would fetch them for herself, and
went upstairs--shallow, broad stairs of black