“What a lot of walking you do!” Lord Walderhurst said to her once, as she passed the group on the lawn.  “Do you know how many hours you have been on your feet to-day?”

“I like it,” she answered, and, as she hurried by, she saw that he was sitting a shade nearer to Lady Agatha than she had ever seen him sit before, and that Agatha, under a large hat of white gauze frills, was looking like a seraph, so sweet and shining were her eyes, so flower-fair her face.  She looked actually happy.

“Perhaps he has been saying things,” Emily thought.  “How happy she will be!  He has such a nice pair of eyes.  He would make a woman very happy.”  A faint sigh fluttered from her lips.  She was beginning to be physically tired, and was not yet quite aware of it.  If she had not been physically tired, she would not even vaguely have had, at this moment, recalled to her mind the fact that she was not of the women to whom “things” are said and to whom things happen.

“Emily Fox-Seton,” remarked Lady Maria, fanning herself, as it was frightfully hot, “has the most admirable effect on me.  She makes me feel generous.  I should like to present her with the smartest things from the wardrobes of all my relations.”

“Do you give her clothes?” asked Walderhurst.

“I haven’t any to spare.  But I know they would be useful to her.  The things she wears are touching; they are so well contrived, and produce such a decent effect with so little.”

Lord Walderhurst inserted his monocle and gazed after the straight, well-set-up back of the disappearing Miss Fox-Seton.

“I think,” said Lady Agatha, gently, “that she is really handsome.”

“So she is,” admitted Walderhurst—­“quite a good-looking woman.”

That night Lady Agatha repeated the amiability to Emily, whose grateful amazement really made her blush.

“Lord Walderhurst knows Sir Bruce Norman,” said Agatha.  “Isn’t it strange?  He spoke of him to me to-day.  He says he is clever.”

“You had a nice talk this afternoon, hadn’t you?” said Emily.  “You both looked so—­so—­as if you were enjoying yourselves when I passed.”

“Did he look as if he were enjoying himself?  He was very agreeable.  I did not know he could be so agreeable.”

“I have never seen him look as much pleased,” answered Emily Fox-Seton.  “Though he always looks as if he liked talking to you, Lady Agatha.  That large white gauze garden-hat”—­reflectively—­“is so very becoming.”

“It was very expensive,” sighed lovely Agatha.  “And they last such a short time.  Mamma said it really seemed almost criminal to buy it.”

“How delightful it will be,” remarked cheering Emily, “when—­when you need not think of things like that!”

“Oh!”—­with another sigh, this time a catch of the breath,—­“it would be like Heaven!  People don’t know; they think girls are frivolous when they care, and that it isn’t serious.  But when one knows one must have things,—­that they are like bread,—­it is awful!”