d you my
pearl necklace," said Lady Cinnamond, laying her hand on the girl's
shoulder. Honour's response was drowned in the noise of horse-hoofs
and clanking that announced an arrival in front of the bungalow.

"Dear Papa and Charles returned already!" cried Mrs Cowper, peering
through the Venetians. "Fly, Mamma! Charley, Charley, come and see
whether you approve of my gown!"

Lady Cinnamond fled, in answer to the sonorous shout of "Rosa! Rosita!
Sita!" which pealed through the house, and Captain Cowper entered from
the verandah.

"Stunning!" he breathed fervently. "Horrid shame to waste it all on a
handful of politicals up in No Man's Land instead of exhibiting it at
Government House. You wear this fallal on your head, I suppose?"

"Oh, Charley, you careless fellow!" Mrs Cowper rescued the broad strip
of lace with indignation. "My beautiful berthe! It goes on the
bodice--_so_, don't you know? On my head, indeed!"

"But it would look ravishing wherever you wore it," averred her
husband, dodging the geranium-spray she threw at him, and there
followed a brisk engagement with the flowers left in the box, to which
Honour listened with some secret contempt but considerable interest, as
she sewed on her roses where her mother had pinned them. Honour was
learning lessons which ran counter to every maxim that had influenced
her hitherto, and baffled all her efforts to reconstruct her vanished
world. Those were the days when phrenology was considered an
indispensable aid to instructors of youth, and a professor of the
science had duly felt Honour's bumps, and recorded, for the guidance of
her cousins, his mature opinion that, "though this young lady will not
find it easy to apply herself to fresh subjects of study, yet she will
never lose what she has once mastered." But in this case the mastering
was the difficulty. To her, life had hitherto meant a round of
recurring duties, to be performed conscientiously as they came, and
love a blinding illumination revealing to a humble worshipper the form
of a hero and a saint, but ending preferably in renunciation--if
voluntary and wholly unnecessary so much the nobler and better. To
think of love in connection with an ordinary, average man was something
very like sacrilege, and poor Honour fairly shuddered when Mrs Jardine,
who bore her a grudge for unsettling Mr Jardine's mind with the new
views she had brought from home, broke to her the horrible fact that
she had