s very restless that morning; he
scarcely was aware that he had got up two hours earlier than usual. At
the breakfast-table he was cheerful and alert. After breakfast he amused
himself in playing with the child till the carriage was brought round.
It was such a morning as does not come a dozen times a year in England.
The sweet, moist air blew from the meadows and up through the lime trees
with a warm, insinuating gladness. The lawn sloped delightfully away to
the flowered embrasures of the park, and a fragrant abundance of flowers
met the eye and cheered the senses. While Richard loitered on the steps
with the child and its nurse, more excited than he knew, Lali came
out and stood beside him. At the moment Richard was looking into the
distance. He did not hear her when she came. She stood near him for a
moment, and did not speak. Her eyes followed the direction of his look,
and idled tenderly with the prospect before her. She did not even notice
the child. The same thought was in the mind of both--with a difference.
Richard was wondering how any one could choose to change the sweet
dignity of that rural life for the flaring, hurried delights of London
and the season. He had thought this a thousand times, and yet, though he
would have been little willing to acknowledge it, his conviction was not
so impregnable as it had been.

Mrs. Francis Armour was stepping from the known to the unknown. She was
leaving the precincts of a life in which, socially, she had been born
again. Its sweetness and benign quietness had all worked upon her nature
and origin to change her. In that it was an out-door life, full of
freshness and open-air vigour, it was not antagonistic to her past. Upon
this sympathetic basis had been imposed the conditions of a fine social
decorum. The conditions must still exist. But how would it be when she
was withdrawn from this peaceful activity of nature and set down among
"those garish lights" in Cavendish Square and Piccadilly? She hardly
knew to what she was going as yet. There had been a few social functions
at Greyhope since she had come, but that could give her, after all, but
little idea of the swing and pressure of London life.

At this moment she was lingering over the scene before her. She was
wondering with the naive wonder of an awakened mind. She had intended
many times of late saying to Richard all the native gratitude she felt;
yet somehow she had never been able to say it. The moment of parti