) She, Mrs. Alwynn, gave it herself. Her
own cook, who had been with her five years, made the cakes, and her own
donkey-cart conveyed the same to the field where the repast was held.

"Miss Deyncourt, will she be there?" asked Dare.

Mrs. Alwynn explained that all the neighborhood, including the Thursbys,
would be there; that she made a point of asking the Thursbys.

"I also will come," said Dare, gravely.

CHAPTER III.

Atherstone was a rambling, old-fashioned, black-and-white house, half
covered with ivy, standing in a rambling, old-fashioned garden--a
charming garden, with clipped yews, and grass paths, and straggling
flowers and herbs growing up in unexpected places. In front of the
house, facing the drawing-room windows, was a bowling-green, across
which, at this time of the afternoon, the house had laid a cool green
shadow.

Two ladies were sitting under its shelter, each with her work.

It was hot still, but the shadows were deepening and lengthening. Away
in the sun hay was being made and carried, with crackings of whips and
distant voices. Beyond the hay-fields lay the silver band of the river,
and beyond again the spire of Slumberleigh Church, and a glimpse among
the trees of Slumberleigh Hall.

"Ralph has started in the dog-cart to meet Charles. They ought to be
here in half an hour, if the train is punctual," said Mrs. Ralph.

She was a graceful woman, with a placid, gentle face. She might be
thirty, but she looked younger. With her pleasant home and her pleasant
husband, and her child to be mildly anxious about, she might well look
young. She looked particularly so now as she sat in her fresh cotton
draperies, winding wool with cool, white hands.

The handiwork of some women has a hard, masculine look. If they sew, it
is with thick cotton in some coarse material; if they knit, it is with
cricket-balls of wool, which they manipulate into wiry stockings and
comforters. Evelyn's wools, on the contrary, were always soft, fleecy,
liable to weak-minded tangles, and so turning, after long periods of
time, into little feminine futilities for which it was difficult to
divine any possible use.

Lady Mary Cunningham, her husband's aunt, made no immediate reply to her
small remark. Evelyn Danvers was not a little afraid of that lady, and,
in truth, Lady Mary, with her thin face and commanding manner, was a
very imposing person. Though past seventy, she sat erect in her chair,
her stick by her side,