There is a little stir on his left, and, looking up, he sees Tita coming towards him down the terrace, stopping at every step to say a word to somebody.  Now she stops as she comes to Margaret, and, laying her hands upon her shoulders, kisses her.  She is dressed in the simplest little white frock in the world—­a frock that makes her look even younger than usual.  Her pretty short air is curling all over her head, and her dark gray eyes are very dark to-day.  Do shadows lie in them, or has she been crying?  It is Rylton who, watching her, asks himself this question, and as he asks it a strange pang shoots through his heart.  Good heavens! why had he married her?  To make her unhappy?  He must have been possessed of the devil when he did that deed.

“How pretty you look, Tita!” Margaret whispers to her—­Margaret, who has the gift of knowing how to soothe and please.  She, too, has her misgivings about those lovely eyes; but all girls like to be told they are pretty, and Tita at once brightens.

“Am I?  You are a goose, Madge!” But she presses Margaret’s hands fondly for all that as she leaves her.

“Lady Rylton, come and sit here,” cries Mrs. Chichester.  “I have a lovely chair here for you.  It’s as soft as——­” She cannot find a simile.

“As what?” asks Gower, who delights in annoying Mrs. Chichester.

“As you!” returns she, with a contemptuous glance that fills him with joy.

“Come,” says Mrs. Chichester, calling again to Tita, and patting the chair in question.  “You look tired.  This is a perfect lounge.”

“She looks as if she had been crying,” says old Miss Gower, frowning at Tita over her glasses.

Again that strange pang contracts Rylton’s heart. Has she been crying—­and because of him?

“Looks!  What are looks?” cries Mrs. Chichester gaily.  “Looks always belie one.”

“Certainly Lady Rylton’s must belie her," says Mrs. Bethune, with a slow smile.  “What cause has she for tears?”

“Not one!” declares Mrs. Chichester with decision.  “It would be ’a sinner above all the Galileans’ who would make Lady Rylton cry.”

Her queer green eyes smile at Tita, who smiles back at her in her little sweet way, and then all at once bursts out laughing.  It is a charming laugh, apparently full of mirth.  There are only two present who do not quite believe in it, Margaret and Tom Hescott—­but these two love her.

As for Rylton, some instinct causes him at this moment to look at Hescott.  Tita’s cousin is staring at her, his brows met, his lips somewhat compressed.  He has forgotten that people may be staring at him in return, maybe measuring his thoughts on this or that.  He has forgotten everything, indeed, except Tita’s pale, laughing face and dancing, tear-stained eyes.

“Do you see a ghost?” whispers Mrs. Bethune to him, who has been watching him with cruel amusement.

“I don’t know,” he answers, hardly hearing her.  Is not Tita to-day a ghost of her sweet self?  And those words, “A sinner above all the Galileans!” Is there such a sinner?—­and if so, surely it is——­