ll meditate."

"Don't be a fool," said Joan still more uncompromisingly. "And anyway
you're very early for lunch." She looked at her wrist watch. . . . "I
said one o'clock and it's only half past twelve. The best people don't
come before they're asked. . . ."

"I throw myself on the mercy of the court," pleaded Vane solemnly.
"I'll sit on this side of the bush and you sit on the other and in a
quarter of an hour we will meet unexpectedly with all the usual
symptoms of affection and joy. . . ."

The girl was slowly retracing her steps, with Vane just behind her, and
suddenly through an opening in the trees Blandford came in sight. It
was not the usual view that most people got, because the path through
the little copse was not very well known--but from nowhere could the
house be seen to better advantage. The sheet of placid, unruffled
water with its low red boathouse: the rolling stretch of green sweeping
up from it to the house broken only by the one terrace above the tennis
lawns; the rose garden, a feast of glorious colour, and then the house
itself with its queer turrets and spires and the giant trees beyond it;
all combined to make an unforgettable picture.

Joan had stopped and Vane stood silently beside her. She was taking in
every detail of the scene, and Vane, glancing at her quickly, surprised
a look of almost brooding fierceness in her grey eyes. It was a look
of protection, of ownership, of fear, all combined: a look such as a
tigress might give if her young were threatened. . . . And suddenly
there recurred to his mind that phrase in Margaret's letter about
financial trouble at Blandford. It had not impressed him particularly
when he read it; now he found himself wondering. . . .

"Isn't it glorious?" The girl was speaking very low, as if unconscious
that she had a listener. Then she turned on Vane swiftly. "Look at
that!" she cried, and her arm swept the whole perfect vista. "Isn't it
worth while doing anything--anything at all--to keep that as one's own?
That has belonged to us for five hundred years--and now! . . . My
God! just think of a second Sir John Patterdale--here"--the brooding
wild mother look was in her eyes again, and her lips were shut tight.

Vane moved restlessly beside her. He felt that the situation was
delicate; that it was only his unexpected and unwelcome arrival on the
scene that had made her take him into his confidence. Evidently there
was something gravely th