with his nurse and Mr.
Thrush, who, not unexpectedly, had arrived in Welsley. The first meeting
between his father and mother would not be complicated by his eager
young presence.

So the garden was empty to-day. Not even the big young gardener was to
be seen; he only came on four days in the week, and this was not one of
them. As Rosamund looked down into the garden, she loved its loneliness,
its misty, autumnal aspect. It was surely not her fault if she had
a natural affection for solitude--not for the hideous solitude of a
childless mother, but for the frequent privacy of a mother who was
alone, but who knew that her child was near, playing perhaps, or gone
for a little jaunt with his faithful nurse, or sleeping upstairs.

As she looked at the garden a faint creeping sense of something almost
like fear came to her. Since Dion had been away she had surely altered,
because she had had a new experience; she had, as it were, touched the
confines of that life which she had deliberately renounced when she had
married.

It seemed to her, as she stood there and remembered her long meditations
in that enclosed and ancient garden, that in these months she had drawn
much nearer to God, and--could it be because of that?--perhaps had
receded a little from her husband.

The sense of uneasiness--she could not call it fear--deepened in her.
Was the receding then implicit in the drawing near? She began to feel
almost confused. She put up a hand to her face; her cheek was hot.

The clock in the room struck four; two minutes later the chimes sounded,
and then Big John announced the hour.

Dion might arrive at any moment now. She turned away rather quickly from
the window. She hated the unusual feeling of self-consciousness which
had come to her.

At ten minutes past four the door bell rang. It must be he. She went to
the drawing-room door, opened it and listened. She heard a man's voice
and a bump; then another bump, a creaking, a sort of scraping, and the
voice once more saying, "I'll manage, miss."

It was Dion's luggage. Harrington's man explained that the gentleman had
said he would walk to Little Cloisters.

Rosamund went back into the drawing-room and shut the door. Now that
Dion's luggage was actually in the house everything seemed curiously
different. A period was definitely over; her loneliness with Robin
in Little Cloisters was at an end. She sat down in one of the two
arm-chairs by the tea-table, clasped her hand