ping shoulders, and of a lady equally youthful but
slenderly erect--moved forward in absorbed communion, as if unconscious
of their surroundings and indefinite as to their direction, till, on the
brink of the wide grass terrace just below their observer's parapet,
they paused a moment and faced each other in closer speech. This
interchange of words, though brief in measure of time, lasted long
enough to add a vivid strand to Mrs. Ansell's thickening skein; then, on
a gesture of the lady's, and without signs of formal leave-taking, the
young man struck into a path which regained the entrance avenue, while
his companion, quickening her pace, crossed the grass terrace and
mounted the wide stone steps sweeping up to the house.

These brought her out on the upper terrace a few yards from Mrs.
Ansell's post, and exposed her, unprepared, to the full beam of welcome
which that lady's rapid advance threw like a searchlight across her
path.

"Dear Miss Brent! I was just wondering how it was that I hadn't seen you
before." Mrs. Ansell, as she spoke, drew the girl's hand into a long
soft clasp which served to keep them confronted while she delicately
groped for whatever thread the encounter seemed to proffer.

Justine made no attempt to evade the scrutiny to which she found herself
exposed; she merely released her hand by a movement instinctively
evasive of the mechanical endearment, explaining, with a smile that
softened the gesture: "I was out with Cicely when you arrived. We've
just come in."

"The dear child! I haven't seen her either." Mrs. Ansell continued to
bestow upon the speaker's clear dark face an intensity of attention in
which, for the moment, Cicely had no perceptible share. "I hear you are
teaching her botany, and all kinds of wonderful things."

Justine smiled again. "I am trying to teach her to wonder: that is the
hardest faculty to cultivate in the modern child."

"Yes--I suppose so; in myself," Mrs. Ansell admitted with a responsive
brightness, "I find it develops with age. The world is a remarkable
place." She threw this off absently, as though leaving Miss Brent to
apply it either to the inorganic phenomena with which Cicely was
supposed to be occupied, or to those subtler manifestations that engaged
her own attention.

"It's a great thing," she continued, "for Bessy to have had your
help--for Cicely, and for herself too. There is so much that I want you
to tell me about her. As an old friend I want th