r, and the fear that, if
he retreated to the house, Mrs. Fisher might follow him up with a paper
to be signed. Mr. Gryce had a constitutional dislike to what he called
"committing himself," and tenderly as he cherished his health, he
evidently concluded that it was safer to stay out of reach of pen and ink
till chance released him from Mrs. Fisher's toils. Meanwhile he cast
agonized glances in the direction of Miss Bart, whose only response was
to sink into an attitude of more graceful abstraction. She had learned
the value of contrast in throwing her charms into relief, and was fully
aware of the extent to which Mrs. Fisher's volubility was enhancing her
own repose.

She was roused from her musings by the approach of her cousin Jack
Stepney who, at Gwen Van Osburgh's side, was returning across the garden
from the tennis court.

The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance in which
Lily figured, and the latter felt a certain annoyance in contemplating
what seemed to her a caricature of her own situation. Miss Van Osburgh
was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high lights: Jack Stepney had
once said of her that she was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste
was in the line of less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger
makes any fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had
been reduced to a crust.

Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the girl's
turned toward her companion's like an empty plate held up to be filled,
while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the encroaching
boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of his smile.

"How impatient men are!" Lily reflected. "All Jack has to do to get
everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him; whereas
I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were
going through an intricate dance, where one misstep would throw me
hopelessly out of time."

As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family
likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no
resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way--he looked
like a clever pupil's drawing from a plaster-cast--while Gwen's
countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on a toy balloon.
But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two had the same prejudices
and ideals, and the same quality of making other standards non-existent
by ignoring t