tion of gloom
which was even more depressing than his sharpness. Janetta did her best
to be cheerful and talkative to Mrs. Brand, and she fancied that he
liked to listen; for he sat on with them in the blue room long after
Nora and Cuthbert had disappeared into the garden and the children were
romping in the wood. Certainly he did not say much to her, but he seemed
greatly disinclined to move.

After a time, Mrs. Brand and Janetta adjourned to the hall, which was
always a favorite place of resort on summer evenings. Traces of the
children's presence made the rooms more cheerful than they used to
be--to Janetta's thinking. Tiny's doll and Julian's ball were more
enlivening to the place than even Cuthbert's sketches and Nora's bunches
of wild flowers. And here, too, Wyvis followed them in an aimless,
subdued sort of way; and, having asked and obtained permission to light
a cigarette, he threw himself into a favorite chair, and seemed to
listen dreamily, while Janetta held patient discourse with his mother on
the ailments of the locality and the difficulty of getting the housework
done. Janetta glanced at him from time to time; he sat so quietly that
she would have thought him sleeping but for the faint blue spirals of
smoke that went up from his cigarette. It was six o'clock in the
evening, and the golden lights and long shadows made Janetta long to be
out of doors; but Mrs. Brand had a nervous fear of rheumatism, and did
not want to move.

"What is that?" said Wyvis, suddenly rousing himself.

Nobody else had heard anything. He strode suddenly to the door, and
flung it open. Janetta heard the quavering tones of the old man-servant,
an astonished, enraptured exclamation from Wyvis himself; and she
knew--instinctively--what to expect. She turned round; it was as she
had feared. Margaret was there. Wyvis was leading her into the room with
the fixed look of adoration in his eyes which had been so much commented
upon at Lady Ashley's party. When she was present, he evidently saw none
but her. Janetta rose quickly and withdrew a little into the back
ground. She wished for a moment that she had not been there--and then it
occurred to her that she might be useful by and by. But it was perhaps
better for Margaret not to see her too soon. Mrs. Brand, utterly
unprepared for this visit, not even knowing the stranger by sight, and,
as usual, quite unready for an emergency, rose nervously from her seat
and stood, timid, awkward, an