He took her up in the same tone; and for a little more of the way there was a delicious bit of talk.  Delicious, because Wych Hazel had eyes and capacities; and her companion’s eyes and capacities were trained and accomplished.  He was at home in the subject; he brought forward his reading and his seeing for her behoof; recommended Ruskin, and gave her some disquisitions of his own that Ruskin need not have been ashamed of.  For those ten or fifteen minutes he was a different man from what Wych Hazel had ever seen him.  Then the house came in sight, and a new subject claimed their attention.  For the mare, whether scenting her stable or finding her spirits raised by getting nearer home, abandoned her quiet manner of going, and after a little dancing and pulling her bridle, testified her disapprobation of all sorts of restraint by flinging her heels into the air, and being obliged to follow her leader, she repeated the amusement continuously.

‘Do your drawing-room windows look on the front?’ said Rollo.

‘Some of them.  Why?’

’Then, by your leave, as I do not care to act the Merry Andrew for half a dozen pair of eyes, I will go to the rear to mount.’  But instead of his more stately salutation, he held out his hand to Wych Hazel with a smile.

‘Good bye,’ she said.  ’I am sorry you have had such a hot walk.  But why don’t you mount here?’

‘I like to choose my audience when I exhibit.’

He clasped Wych Hazel’s hand after the fashion of the other day; then disappeared one way as she went the other.

Passing swiftly on, holding up her long riding skirt so that it seemed no encumbrance, musing to herself on past events and present expectations; and not without a certain flutter of pleasure and amusement and timidity at the part she had to fill, Wych Hazel reached the low, broad steps and went in.

A slender little person, as airy and independent as the bush she was named for; one of those figures that never by any chance fall into any attitude or take any pose that is not lovely.  Hair—­as to arrangement—­decidedly the worse for the walk; cheeks a little warmed up with the sun, and perhaps other things; grave eyes, where the woman was but beginning to supplant the child; a mouth as sweet as it could be, in all its changes; and a hand and foot that were fabulous.  So the mistress of Chickaree went in to receive her first instalment of visitors.

CHAPTER XIV.

HOLDING COURT.

She was scarcely within the door when Mr. Falkirk met her, put her arm within his and led her into the drawing-room.  For a few minutes there the impression was merely of a flutter of gauzes, a shifting scene of French bonnets, a show of delicately gloved hands, and a general breeze of compliments and gratulations, in those soft and indeterminate tones that stir nothing.  Mme. Lasalle it was, with a bevy of ladies, older