She held an armful of blue serge, and,
going up to a table in the window, she took from it a little work-ease,
and was about to vanish again when Langham went up to her.

'You look intolerably busy,' he said to her, discontentedly.

'Six dresses, ten cloaks, eight petticoats to cut out by luncheon
time,' she answered demurely, with a countenance of most Dorcas-like
seriousness--'and if I spoil them I shall have to pay for the stuff!'

He shrugged his shoulders, and looked at her smiling, still master of
himself and of his words.

'And no music--none at all? Perhaps you don't know that I too can
accompany?'

'You play!' she exclaimed, incredulous.

'Try me.'

The light of his fine black eyes seemed to encompass her. She moved
backward a little, shaking her head. 'Not this morning,' she said. 'Oh
dear, no, not this morning! I am afraid you don't know anything about
tacking or fixing, or the abominable time they take. Well, it could
hardly be expected. There is nothing in the world'--and she shook her
serge vindictively--'that I hate so much!'

'And not this afternoon, for Robert and I go fishing. But this evening?'
he said, detaining her.

She nodded lightly, dropped her lovely eyes with a sudden embarrassment,
and went away with lightning quickness.

A minute or two later Elsmere laid a hand on his friend's shoulder.
'Come and see the Hall, old fellow. It will be our last chance, for the
Squire and his sister come back this afternoon. I must parochialize a
bit afterward, but you shan't be much victimized.'

Langham submitted, and they sallied forth. It was a soft rainy morning,
one of the first heralds of autumn. Gray mists were drifting silently
across the woods and the wide stubbles of the now shaven cornfield,
where white lines of reapers were at work, as the morning cleared,
making and stacking the sheaves. After a stormy night the garden was
strewn with _debris_, and here and there noiseless prophetic showers of
leaves were dropping on the lawn.

Elsmere took his guest along a bit of common, where great black junipers
stood up like magnates in council above the motley undergrowth of fern
and heather, and then they turned into the park. A great stretch of
dimpled land it was, falling softly toward the south and west, bounded
by a shining twisted river, and commanding from all its highest points
a heathery world of distance, now turned a stormy purple under the
drooping fringes of the rain clouds. They