nd now I am sure you would like to
see my aunt before you go. She is in the aviary, feeding her foreign
birds. If you go out by that window and pass along the terrace to your
left, you will find the aviary and the duchess. I would suggest the
advisability of not mentioning this conversation to my aunt. She does
not approve of elaborate altar-cloths, and would scold us both, and
insist on the money being spent in providing boots for the school
children. No, please do not thank me. I am really glad of an
opportunity of helping on your excellent work in this neighbourhood."

Jane wondered once or twice whether the cheque would be cashed. She
would have liked to receive it back by post, torn in half; with a few
wrathful lines of manly indignation. But when it returned to her in due
course from her bankers, it was indorsed P. BILBERRY, in a neat
scholarly hand, without even a dash of indignation beneath it; and she
threw it into the waste-paper basket, with rather a bitter smile.

These were Jane's experiences of offers of marriage. She had never been
loved for her own sake; she had never felt herself really first in the
heart and life of another. And now, when the adoring love of a man's
whole being was tenderly, cautiously beginning to surround and envelop
her, she did not recognise the reason of her happiness or of his
devotion. She considered him the avowed lover of another woman, with
whose youth and loveliness she would not have dreamed of competing; and
she regarded this closeness of intimacy between herself and Garth as a
development of a friendship more beautiful than she had hitherto
considered possible.

Thus matters stood when Tuesday arrived and the Overdene party broke
up. Jane went to town to spend a couple of days with the Brands. Garth
went straight to Shenstone, where he had been asked expressly to meet
Miss Lister and her aunt, Mrs. Parker Bangs. Jane was due at Shenstone
on Friday for the week-end.

CHAPTER IX

LADY INGLEBY'S HOUSE PARTY

As Jane took her seat and the train moved out of the London terminus
she leaned back in her corner with a sigh of satisfaction. Somehow
these days in town had seemed insufferably long. Jane reviewed them
thoughtfully, and sought the reason. They had been filled with
interests and engagements; and the very fact of being in town, as a
rule, contented her. Why had she felt so restless and dissatisfied and
lonely?

From force of habit she had just stopped at