er, herself almost forgotten as she
sat in a corner of the room. The big black eyes were on these two,
drifting from the face of one to the face of the other, taking no heed,
and no count of anything else but of these two affianced lovers.

Very clearly and almost coldly Joan had expressed her own wishes.

"If you wish the marriage to take place soon, I am content. I would like
it to--to be--not very soon--not just yet," she added, and seemed to be
speaking against her own will, and as though in opposition to her own
thoughts. "Still, whatever you arrange, I will willingly agree to. I
prefer to leave it all to you, Helen, and you, Connie, and--and you,
Johnny. But it might take place just before Helen goes away. That would
be time enough, would it not?"

"It was the very thing I was going to suggest," Helen said. "In three
months' time then, Joan."

Joan bowed her head. "In three months' time then," she said.

They were all three very silent as Johnny drove the little car back to
Buddesby that evening. The sun was down, but the twilight lingered.
Ellice sat crushed in between Johnny's big bulk and Connie, and she
would not have changed places with the queen on her throne.

"There's Rundle with that horrible lurcher dog of his," said Johnny,
and spoke more to make conversation than anything else.

They could see the man, the village poacher, slouching along under a
hedge with the ever-faithful dog close at heel.

"A horrible, fierce-looking beast," said Connie. "It fights with every
dog in the place, and--"

"But it loves him; it loves its master," Ellice said passionately. "It
would die for its master, wouldn't it?"

"Why, I daresay it would, Gipsy," Johnny said. "But why so excited about
it, little girl?"

"If you--if you," Ellice said, "had the offer of two dogs, the one
splendid, a thoroughbred deerhound, graceful, beautiful, fine to look
at, but cold and with no love to give its master, and the other--a
hideous beast like Rundle's lurcher--but a beast who could love and die
for its master, and dying lick the hand of the master it loved, glad and
grateful to--to die for him--which would you have, which would you have,
Johnny?"

Johnny was hardly listening. He was looking down the dusky road and
seeing in imagination a face, the most beautiful, wonderful face that
his world had ever held.

"I don't know, Gipsy girl," he said. "I don't know!"

"No!" Ellice said; and her voice shook and quavered in an u