on the arm of the sofa, reached down to pick up his crutches.
But his grasp was not very sure just then. He secured one. To his
intense annoyance the other escaped him, falling back on the floor with
a rattle. Then, instantly, before he could make effort to recover it,
Honoria's white figure swept down on one knee in front of him. She laid
hold of the crutch, gave it him silently, and rose to her full height
again, pale, gallant, stately, but with a quivering of her lips and
nostrils, and an amazement of regret and pity in her eyes, which very
certainly had never found place there heretofore.

"Thanks," Richard said.--He waited just a minute. He too was amazed
somehow. He needed to revise the position. "About those eight or ten
happy families whom you wish to root so firmly in the soil, and the
housing of them--are you busy to-morrow morning?"

"Oh no--no"--Honoria declared, with rather unnecessary emphasis.

Generosity should surely be met by generosity. Dickie leaned his arm
against the arm of the sofa, and looked up at the speaker. Her
transparent sincerity, her superb chastity--he could call it by no
other word--of manner and movement, even of outline--the slight
angularity of strong muscle as opposed to soft roundness of cushioned
flesh--these arrested and impressed him.

"I had Chifney up from the stables this afternoon and made my peace
with him," he said. "He was very full of your praises, Honoria--for the
cousinship may as well be acknowledged between us, don't you think? You
have supplemented my lapses in respect of him, as of a good deal
else."--Richard looked away to the door of Lady Calmady's bedroom. It
stood open, and Katherine came from within with some books, and a
silver candlestick, in her hands.

"My dears," she said, "do you know it grows very late?"

"All right," he answered, "we're making out some plans for
to-morrow."--He looked at Honoria again. "Chifney engaged he and
Chaplin would find a horse, between them, which could be trusted
to--well--to put up with me," he said. "I promised to go down and have
breakfast with dear Mrs. Chifney at the stables, but I can be back here
by eleven. Would you be inclined to come out with me then? We could
ride over to that burnt land and have a poke round for sites for your
cottages."

"Oh yes, indeed, I can come," Honoria answered. Her delightful smile
beamed forth, and it had a new and very delicate charm in it. For it so
happened that the woman in he