emperament, but
there was also an indefinite something which spoke of due balance and
repose. Nasmyth was more convinced than ever that he had not met any
other woman fit to compare with her. Her age, as he knew, having given
her many birthday presents, was twenty-four.

"Yes," he said, in answer to her remark, "but it's curious that I can't
fix my mind upon the subject here. The night's mild; shall we go out on
to the veranda?"

"Wait until I get a wrap. I understand."

"You always do that," Nasmyth declared.

She joined him outside in another minute and seated herself in the chair
he drew out. The house was small and irregularly built, and a glass roof
supported on light pillars stretched along part of the front. A half-moon
hung above a ridge of dark fir wood, a tarn gleamed below, and here and
there down a shadowy hollow there was a sparkle of running water. On the
other side of the dale the moors stretched away, waste and empty, toward
the half-seen hills. The loneliness of the prospect reminded Nasmyth of
Canada, and the resemblance grew more marked when the crying of plover
rose from the dim heath--it brought back the call of the loon. Still, he
did not wonder why Millicent, an orphan with ample means, lived alone
except for her elderly companion on the desolate Border.

"You don't mind, I know," he said as he lighted a cigar.

"I can make that concession willingly," she answered with a smile. "I
suppose I'm old-fashioned, because I go no farther."

"Keep so," advised Nasmyth. "Of course, that's unnecessary; but I never
could make out why women should want to smoke. From my point of view, it
isn't becoming."

He was putting off a task from which he shrank, and she indulged him.

"One retains one's prejudices in a place like this," she said. "I felt
sadly left behind when I was last in London; and the few visits I made in
the home counties a little while ago astonished me. Nobody seemed to stay
at home; the motors were continually whirling them up to town and back;
the guests kept coming and going. There was so much restlessness and
bustle that I was glad to be home again."

"It has struck me," returned Nasmyth with an air of sage reflection,
"that we who live quietly in the country are the pick of the lot. Sounds
egotistical, doesn't it? But if we don't do much good--and I'm afraid I
don't, anyway--neither do we do any harm."

"I'm not sure that that's a great deal to be proud of."

"I didn't includ