he had time for, in the whirl of politics and fashion,
the danger of his friendship with this lady to whom she alluded so
discreetly as 'Anonyma.'

Pure chance had been responsible for the inception of that friendship.
Going one December afternoon to the farmhouse of a tenant, just killed
by a fall from his horse, Miltoun had found the widow in a state of
bewildered grief, thinly cloaked in the manner of one who had almost
lost the power to express her feelings, and quite lost it in presence
of 'the gentry.' Having assured the poor soul that she need have no
fear about her tenancy, he was just leaving, when he met, in the
stone-flagged entrance, a lady in a fur cap and jacket, carrying in her
arms a little crying boy, bleeding from a cut on the forehead. Taking
him from her and placing him on a table in the parlour, Miltoun looked
at this lady, and saw that she was extremely grave, and soft, and
charming. He inquired of her whether the mother should be told.

She shook her head.

"Poor thing, not just now: let's wash it, and bind it up first."

Together therefore they washed and bound up the cut. Having finished,
she looked at Miltoun, and seemed to say: "You would do the telling so
much better than I."

He, therefore, told the mother and was rewarded by a little smile from
the grave lady.

From that meeting he took away the knowledge of her name, Audrey Lees
Noel, and the remembrance of a face, whose beauty, under a cap of
squirrel's fur, pursued him. Some days later passing by the village
green, he saw her entering a garden gate. On this occasion he had asked
her whether she would like her cottage re-thatched; an inspection of
the roof had followed; he had stayed talking a long time. Accustomed
to women--over the best of whom, for all their grace and lack of
affectation, high-caste life had wrapped the manner which seems to take
all things for granted--there was a peculiar charm for Miltoun in this
soft, dark-eyed lady who evidently lived quite out of the world, and had
so poignant, and shy, a flavour. Thus from a chance seed had blossomed
swiftly one of those rare friendships between lonely people, which can
in short time fill great spaces of two lives.

One day she asked him: "You know about me, I suppose?" Miltoun made a
motion of his head, signifying that he did. His informant had been the
vicar.

"Yes, I am told, her story is a sad one--a divorce."

"Do you mean that she has been divorced, or----"

F