“Are you a doll?” asks Captain Marryatt, who is leaning over her.

He is always leaning over her!

“I never know what I am,” says Mrs. Chichester frankly, her queer eyes growing a little queerer.  “But Miss Bolton, how delightful she is! so natural, and Nature is always so—­so——­”

“Natural!” supplies Mr. Gower, who is lying on a rug watching the game below.

“Oh, get out!” says Mrs. Chichester, whose manners are not her strong point.

She is sitting on a garden chair behind him, and she gives him a little dig in the back with her foot as she speaks.

“Don’t!  I’m bad there!” says he.

“I believe you are bad everywhere,” says she, with a pout.

“Then you believe wrong!  My heart is a heart of gold,” says Mr. Gower ecstatically.

“I’d like to see it,” says Mrs. Chichester, who is not above a flirtation with a man whom she knows is beyond temptation; and truly Randal Gower is hard to get at!

“Does that mean that you would gladly see me dead?” asks he.  “Oh, cruel woman!”

“I’m tired of seeing you as you are, any way,” says she, tilting her chin.  “Why don’t you fall in love with somebody, for goodness’ sake?”

“Well, I’m trying,” says Mr. Gower, “I’m trying hard; but,” looking at her, “I don’t seem to get on.  You don’t encourage me, you know, and I’m very shy!”

“There, don’t be stupid,” says Mrs. Chichester, seeing that Marryatt is growing a little enraged.  “We were talking of Miss Bolton.  We were saying——­”

“That she was Nature’s child.”

“Give me Nature!” says Captain Marryatt, breaking into the tête-à-tête a little sulkily.  “Nothing like it.”

“Is that a proposal?” demands Mr. Gower, raising himself on his elbow, and addressing him with deep interest.  “It cannot be Mrs. Bolton you refer to, as she is unfortunately dead.  Nature’s child, however, is still among us.  Shall I convey your offer to her?”

“Yes, shall he?” asks Mrs. Chichester.

She casts a teasing glance at her admirer; a little amused light has come into her green-gray eyes.

“I should think you, Randal, would be the fitting person to propose to her, considering how you haunt her footsteps day and night,” says a strange voice.

It comes from a tall, gaunt old lady, who, with ringlets flying, advances towards the group.  She is a cousin of the late Sir Maurice, and an aunt of Gower’s, from whom much is to be expected by the latter at her death.  There is therefore, as you see, a cousinship between the Gowers and the Ryltons.

“My dear aunt, is that you?” says Mr. Gower with enthusiasm.  “Come and sit here; do, just here beside me!”

He pats the rug on which he is reclining as he speaks, beckoning her warmly to it, knowing as he well does that her bones would break if she tried to bring them to so low a level.