howl, as if the animal were in pain. So I put on my cloak and crossed
the coombe up the bank--it's only a few minutes' scramble, though to you
it seemed ever such a long way to-night,--and there I saw you lying on
the grass with the little doggie running round and round you, and making
all the noise he could to bring help. Wise little beastie!" And she
stooped to pat the tiny object of her praise, who sighed comfortably and
stretched his dainty paws out a little more luxuriously--"If it hadn't
been for him you might have died!"

He said nothing, but watched her in a kind of morbid fascination as she
went to the fire and removed a saucepan which she had set there some
minutes previously. Taking a large old-fashioned Delft bowl from a
cupboard at one side of the fire-place, she filled it with steaming soup
which smelt deliciously savoury and appetising, and brought it to him
with some daintily cut morsels of bread. He was too ill to feel much
hunger, but to please her, he managed to sip it by slow degrees, talking
to her between-whiles.

"You say you live alone here,"--he murmured--"But are you always alone?"

"Always,--ever since father died."

"How long is that ago?"

"Five years."

"You are not--you have not been--married?"

She laughed.

"No indeed! I'm an old maid!"

"Old?" And he raised his eyes to her face. "You are not old!"

"Well, I'm not young, as young people go,"--she declared--"I'm
thirty-four. I was never married for myself in my youth,--and I shall
certainly never be married for my money in my age!" Again her pretty
laugh rang softly on the silence. "But I'm quite happy, all the same!"

He still looked at her intently,--and all suddenly it dawned upon him
that she was a beautiful woman. He saw, as for the first time, the clear
transparency of her skin, the soft brilliancy of her eyes, and the
wonderful masses of her warm bronze brown hair. He noted the perfect
poise of her figure, clad as it was in a cheap print gown,--the slimness
of her waist, the fulness of her bosom, the white roundness of her
throat. Then he smiled.

"So you are an old maid!" he said--"That's very strange!"

"Oh, I don't think so!" and she shook her head deprecatingly--"Many
women are old maids by choice as well as by necessity. Marriage isn't
always bliss, you know! And unless a woman loves a man very very
much--so much that she can't possibly live her life without him, she'd
better keep single. At least that's _my_