ed. "Are you
going to the conservatories? I would so like to see them. May I go
too?"

Lady Calmady stood by the door in the high, red-brick wall. She wore a
white, lace scarf over her hair--turned up and back, dressed high, as
of old, though now somewhat gray upon the temples. The lace was tied
under her chin, framing her face. In her gray dress she looked as some
stately, yet gracious lady abbess might--a lady abbess who had known
love in all fulness, yet in all honour--a lady abbess painted, if such
happy chance could be, by the debonair and clean-hearted Reynolds. She
stood smiling, charmed--though a trifle unwillingly--by the brilliant
vision of the younger woman.

"Assuredly you may come with me, if it would amuse you," she said.

"I may? Then let me open that door for you. La! la! how it sticks. Last
night's rain must have swelled it;" and she wrestled unsuccessfully
with the lock.

"My dear, don't try any more," Katherine said. "You will tire yourself.
The exertion is too great for you. I will go back and call one of the
servants."

"No, no;" and regardless of her fine laces, and trinkets, and sables
Madame de Vallorbes put her shoulder against the resisting door and
fairly burst it open.

"See," she cried, breathless but triumphant, "I am very strong."

"You are very pretty," Katharine said, almost involuntarily.

The steeply-terraced kitchen gardens, neat box edgings, wide flower
borders in which a few clumps of chrysanthemum and Michaelmas daisy
still resisted the frost, ranged down to greenish brown ponds in the
valley bottom spotted with busy, quacking companies of white ducks.
Beyond was an ascending slope of thick wood, the topmost trees of which
showed bare against the sky line. All this was framed by the arch of
the door. Madame de Vallorbes glanced at it, while she pulled down the
soft waves of hair, which her late exertions had slightly disarranged,
over her right temple. Then she turned impulsively to Lady Calmady.

"Thank you, dear Aunt Katherine," she said. "I would so like you to
like me, you know."

"I should be rather unpardonably difficult to please, if I did not like
you, my dear," Lady Calmady answered. But she sighed as she spoke.

The two women moved away, side by side, down the path to the glistering
greenhouses. But Camp, who, missing Richard, had followed his mistress
out of the house for a leisurely morning potter, turned back sulkily
across the gravel homewards, his tail