it conceivably
worth while to get up in the morning.

The servant who ushered in Amherst, thinking the room empty, had not
mentioned his name; and for a moment he and his hostess examined each
other in silence, Bessy puzzled at the unannounced appearance of a
good-looking young man who might have been some one she had met and
forgotten, while Amherst felt his self-possession slipping away into the
depths of a pair of eyes so dark-lashed and deeply blue that his only
thought was one of wonder at his previous indifference to women's eyes.

"Mrs. Westmore?" he asked, restored to self-command by the perception
that his longed-for opportunity was at hand; and Bessy, his voice
confirming the inference she had drawn from his appearance, replied with
a smile: "I am Mrs. Westmore. But if you have come to see me, I ought to
tell you that in a moment I shall be obliged to go out to our mills. I
have a business appointment with our manager, but if----"

She broke off, gracefully waiting for him to insert his explanation.

"I have come from the manager; I am John Amherst--your assistant
manager," he added, as the mention of his name apparently conveyed no
enlightenment.

Mrs. Westmore's face changed, and she let slip a murmur of surprise
that would certainly have flattered Amherst's mother if she could have
heard it; but it had an opposite effect on the young man, who inwardly
accused himself of having tried to disguise his trade by not putting on
his everyday clothes.

"How stupid of me! I took you for--I had no idea; I didn't expect Mr.
Truscomb here," his employer faltered in embarrassment; then their eyes
met and both smiled.

"Mr. Truscomb sent me to tell you that he is ill, and will not be able
to show you the mills today. I didn't mean to ask for you--I was told to
give the message to Mr. Langhope," Amherst scrupulously explained,
trying to repress the sudden note of joy in his voice.

He was subject to the unobservant man's acute flashes of vision, and
Mrs. Westmore's beauty was like a blinding light abruptly turned on eyes
subdued to obscurity. As he spoke, his glance passed from her face to
her hair, and remained caught in its meshes. He had never seen such
hair--it did not seem to grow in the usual orderly way, but bubbled up
all over her head in independent clusters of brightness, breaking, about
the brow, the temples, the nape, into little irrelevant waves and eddies
of light, with dusky hollows of softness wh