ses. He was near the farm-wife's kitchen,
but to windward of the cooking-reek, pleasantly warmed, sufficiently
shaded, and alone, with open letter on the rug covering his legs.
He whistled to Jane's dog Wayland, a retriever, having Newfoundland
relationships, of smithy redness and ruggedness; it was the whistle that
startled her to turn and see him as she was in the act of handing Mrs.
Lappett her primroses.

'Out? I feared it would be a week. Is it quite prudent?' Jane said,
toning down her delight.

He answered with the half-smile that refers these questions to the
settled fact. Air had always brought him round; now he could feel he was
embarked for recovery: and he told her how the farmer and one of his
men had lent a shoulder to present him to his old and surest
physician--rather like a crippled ghost. M. Adister was upstairs in bed
with one of her headaches. Captain Con, then, was attending her, Jane
supposed: She spoke of him as the most devoted of husbands.

A slight hardening of Philip's brows, well-known to her by this time,
caused her to interrogate his eyes. They were fixed on her in his manner
of gazing with strong directness. She read the contrary opinion, and
some hieroglyphic matter besides.

'We all respect him for his single-hearted care of her,' she said. 'I
have a great liking for him. His tirades about the Saxon tyrant are not
worth mentioning, they mean nothing. He would be one of the first to
rush to the standard if there were danger; I know he would. He is truly
chivalrous, I am sure.'

Philip's broad look at her had not swerved. The bowl of primroses placed
beside him on a chair by the farmer's dame diverted it for a moment.

'You gathered them?' he said.

Jane drank his look at the flowers.

'Yes, on my way,' she replied. 'We can none of us live for ever; and
fresh water every day will keep them alive a good long time. They had
it from the clouds yesterday. Do they not seem a bath of country
happiness!' Evidently they did their service in pleasing him.

Seeing his fingers grope on the rug, she handed him his open letters.

He selected the second, passing under his inspection, and asked her to
read it.

She took the letter, wondering a little that it should be in Captain
Con's handwriting.

'I am to read it through?' she said, after a run over some lines.

He nodded. She thought it a sign of his friendliness in sharing family
secrets with her, and read:

'MY DEAR PHILIP,--Not a