The cook nodded.

“If only her ladyship’ll find something she likes,” he said, not without a slight tone of reproach.

“You hear that, Elizabeth?” said her brother as they sat down to the well-spread board.

Elizabeth looked plaintive.  It was one of her chief weaknesses to wish to be liked—­adored, perhaps, is the better word—­by her servants and she generally accomplished it.  But the price of Yerkes’s affections was too high.

“It seems to me that we have only just finished luncheon, not to speak of tea,” she said, looking in dismay at the menu before her.  “Phil, do you wish to see me return home like Mrs. Melhuish?”

Phil surveyed his sister.  Mrs. Melhuish was the wife of their local clergyman in Hampshire; a poor lady plagued by abnormal weight, and a heart disease.

“You might borrow pounds from Mrs. Melhuish, and nobody would ever know.  You really are too thin, Lisa—­a perfect scarecrow.  Of course Yerkes sees that he could do a lot for you.  All the same, that’s a pretty gown you’ve got on—­an awfully pretty gown,” he repeated with emphasis, adding immediately afterwards in another tone—­“Lisa!—­I say!—­you’re not going to wear black any more?”

“No”—­said Lady Merton, “no—­I am not going to wear black any more.”  The words came lingeringly out, and as the servant removed her plate, Elizabeth turned to look out of the window at the endless woods, a shadow on her beautiful eyes.

She was slenderly made, with a small face and head round which the abundant hair was very smoothly and closely wound.  The hair was of a delicate brown, the complexion clear, but rather colourless.  Among other young and handsome women, Elizabeth Merton made little effect; like a fine pencil drawing, she required an attentive eye.  The modelling of the features, of the brow, the cheeks, the throat, was singularly refined, though without a touch of severity; her hands, with their very long and slender fingers, conveyed the same impression.  Her dress, though dainty, was simple and inconspicuous, and her movements, light, graceful, self-controlled, seemed to show a person of equable temperament, without any strong emotions.  In her light cheerfulness, her perpetual interest in the things about her, she might have reminded a spectator of some of the smaller sea-birds that flit endlessly from wave to wave, for whom the business of life appears to be summed up in flitting and poising.

The comparison would have been an inadequate one.  But Elizabeth Merton’s secrets were not easily known.  She could rave of Canada; she rarely talked of herself.  She had married, at the age of nineteen, a young Cavalry officer, Sir Francis Merton, who had died of fever within a year of their wedding, on a small West African expedition for which he had eagerly offered himself.  Out of the ten months of their marriage, they had spent four together.  Elizabeth was now twenty-seven, and her married life had become