be more gratifying? Althea again glanced at Helen,
but Helen again seemed to slumber. Her face in repose had a look of
discontent and sorrow, and Franklin's eyes, following her own, no doubt
recognised what she did. He observed Helen for some moments before
returning to the theme of efficiency.

It was a little later on that Althea's opportunity--and crisis--came.
Aunt Julia had gone in and Miss Buckston suggested to Franklin that he
should take a turn with her before tea. Franklin got up at once and
walked away beside her, and Althea knew that his alacrity was the
greater because he felt that by going with Miss Buckston he left her
alone with her cherished friend. As he and Miss Buckston disappeared in
the shrubberies, Helen opened her eyes and looked at them.

'How do you like Miss Buckston now that you see her at closer quarters?'
Althea asked, hoping to approach the subject that preoccupied her by a
circuitous method.

Helen smiled. 'One hardly likes her better at closer quarters, does one?
She is like a gun going off every few moments.'

Althea smiled too; she no longer felt many qualms of loyalty on Miss
Buckston's behalf.

Helen said no more, and the subject was still unapproached. 'And how do
you like Mr. Kane?' Althea now felt herself forced to add.

She had not intended to use that casual tone, nearly the same tone that
she had used for Miss Buckston. But she had a dimly apprehended and
strongly felt wish not to forestall any verdict of Helen's; to make sure
that Helen should have an open field for pronouncing her verdict
candidly. Yet she was hardly prepared for the candour of Helen's reply,
though in the shock that attended it she knew in a moment that she had
brought it upon herself. One didn't question people about one's near
friends in that casual tone.

'Funny little man,' said Helen.

After the shock of it--her worst suspicions confirmed--it was a deep
qualm that Althea felt, a qualm in which she knew that something
definite and final had happened to her; something sharp yet vague, all
blurred by the balmy softness of the day, the sense of physical
well-being, the beauty of green branches and bays of deep blue sky
above. It was difficult to know, for a moment, just what had happened,
for it was not as if she had ever definitely told herself that she
intended to marry Franklin. The clearest contrast between the moment of
revelation and that which had gone before lay in the fact that not until