forgotten, I happened to overhear a conversation which was not intended
for my ears. I heard my name mentioned, and I heard some one answer,
'Isabella! Oh, we all love old Isabella--she is just like a nice sandy
cat.' And the person who said that was the one whose opinion I valued
more than anything else in the wide world. That remark showed me
exactly where I stood, it left no loophole for self-deception. A man
does not want to marry a sandy cat."

Philippa could not help smiling at Isabella's tone. "A very pleasant
companion for the fireside," she said decidedly.

"That may be; but who thinks of the fireside when the sun is shining,
and spring is in the air and in the blood? Not a bit of it. It is
human nature--beauty rules the world, and it does not matter whether
the particular world she rules over is large or small, her dominion is
the same. Beauty is queen, and although her reign may be short it is
absolute. The queen can do no wrong."

Isabella spoke half jestingly, and Philippa thought of her conversation
with the doctor and his judgment, or rather his vindication, of a
beautiful woman. It seemed a proof in favour of the argument.

"And so," continued the other, "like the fool I was, instead of proving
that I was something more than a hearthrug ornament, I shut up at that
remark, and retired still further into my shell. I stayed there for a
long time. The years passed, and youth with them, and then, one day,
when I had learned quite a few lessons, I realised that the years which
rob us so in passing throw us a few compensations in return for all the
wealth they steal, and that although the pattern had all gone wrong,
still, there was no sense in leaving my particular square of the
patchwork with the edges all frayed. So I took my brains off the shelf
and dusted them, with a very fair result on the whole. If I had been a
man in a novel I should of course have gone to the New Forest, and
lived the simple life in sandals and few clothes, subsisting mainly on
nuts; but as I was a woman in real life, with an honest contempt for
what some one has called the widowhood of the unsatisfied, I settled
down here. For reasons of my own I wanted to be in this part of the
world. To me there is ever a healing strength in wide spaces, and
Bessmoor has been my best friend. And if the leaves of memory make a
rustling at times, I am glad of it. I do not want to forget. By this
I do not mean I spend my time in