“You get up earlier than Lady Agatha,” he remarked, after he had wished her “Good-morning.”

“She is oftener invited to the country than I am,” she answered.  “When I have a country holiday, I want to spend every moment of it out of doors.  And the mornings are so lovely.  They are not like this in Mortimer Street.”

“Do you live in Mortimer Street?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like it?”

“I am very comfortable.  I am fortunate in having a nice landlady.  She and her daughter are very kind to me.”

The morning was indeed heavenly.  The masses of flowers were drenched with dew, and the already hot sun was drawing fragrance from them and filling the warm air with it.  The marquis, with hia monocle fixed, looked up into the cobalt-blue sky and among the trees, where a wood-dove or two cooed with musical softness.

“Yes,” he observed, with a glance which swept the scene, “it is different from Mortimer Street, I suppose.  Are you fond of the country?”

“Oh, yes,” sighed Emily; “oh, yes!”

She was not a specially articulate person.  She could not have conveyed in words all that her “Oh, yes!” really meant of simple love for and joy in rural sights and sounds and scents.  But when she lifted her big kind hazel eyes to him, the earnestness of her emotion made them pathetic, as the unspeakableness of her pleasures often did.

Lord Walderhurst gazed at her through the monocle with an air he sometimes had of taking her measure without either unkindliness or particular interest.

“Is Lady Agatha fond of the country?” he inquired.

“She is fond of everything that is beautiful,” she replied.  “Her nature is as lovely as her face, I think.”

“Is it?”

Emily walked a step or two away to a rose climbing up the gray-red wall, and began to clip off blossoms, which tumbled sweetly into her basket.

“She seems lovely in everything,” she said, “in disposition and manner and—­everything.  She never seems to disappoint one or make mistakes.”

“You are fond of her?”

“She has been so kind to me.”

“You often say people are kind to you.”

Emily paused and felt a trifle confused.  Realising that she was not a clever person, and being a modest one, she began to wonder if she was given to a parrot-phrase which made her tiresome.  She blushed up to her ears.

“People are kind,” she said hesitatingly.  “I—­you see, I have nothing to give, and I always seem to be receiving.”

“What luck!” remarked his lordship, calmly gazing at her.

He made her feel rather awkward, and she was at once relieved and sorry when he walked away to join another early riser who had come out upon the lawn.  For some mysterious reason Emily Fox-Seton liked him.  Perhaps his magnificence and the constant talk she had heard of him had warmed her imagination.  He had never said anything particularly intelligent to her, but she felt as if he had.  He was a rather silent man, but never looked stupid.  He had made some good speeches in the House of Lords, not brilliant, but sound and of a dignified respectability.  He had also written two pamphlets.  Emily had an enormous respect for intellect, and frequently, it must be admitted, for the thing which passed for it.  She was not exacting.