You have watched with interest some close-folded bud; one day all promise is shut within those delicate sepals, and on the next, for the fulness of time has come, you find the very flower with its glow and its perfume.  So it sometimes happens that a human soul finds its season, and at a touch expands to wonderful new life.

Mrs. Ormonde perceived at breakfast that Thyrza desired nothing more than to be left to pass her day in freedom.  So she gave her visitor a little bag with provision against seaside appetite, and let her go forth till dinner-time; then again till the hour of tea.  In the evening Thyrza was again bidden to the drawing-room.  She found Miss Newthorpe there.

‘Come now, and tell us what you have been doing all day long,’ Mrs. Ormonde said.  ’Why, the sun and the wind have already touched your cheeks!’

‘I have enjoyed myself,’ Thyrza replied, quickly, seating herself near her new friend.

She could give little more description than that.  Annabel talked with her, and presently, at Mrs. Ormonde’s request, went to the piano.  When the first notes had sounded, Thyrza let her head droop a little.  Music such as this she had not imagined.  When Annabel came back to her seat, she gazed at her, admiring and loving.

’Now will you sing us ‘Annie Laurie’?’ said Mrs. Ormonde.  ’I’ll play for you.’

‘What is that child’s future?’ Mrs. Ormonde asked of Annabel, when Thyrza had left them together.

‘Not a sad one, I think,’ said Annabel, musingly.  ’Happily, her husband will not be an untaught working man.’

’No, thank goodness for that!  I suppose they will be married in two or three weeks.  Her voice is a beautiful thing lost.’

’We won’t grieve over that.  Her own happiness is of more account.  I do wish father could have seen her!’

’Oh, she must come to us again some day.  Your father would have alarmed her too much.  Haven’t you felt all the time as if she were something very delicate, something to be carefully guarded against shocks and hazards?  As I saw her from my window going out of the garden this morning, I felt a sort of fear; I was on the point of sending a servant to keep watch over her from a distance.

There was a silence, then Mrs. Ormonde murmured: 

‘I wonder whether she is in love with him?’

Annabel smiled, but said nothing.

’She told me that he is very kind to her.  ‘Just as kind as Lyddy,’ she said.  Indeed, who wouldn’t be?’

‘We have every reason to think highly of Mr. Grail,’ Annabel remarked.  ‘He must be as exceptional in his class as she is.’

‘Yes.  But the exceptional people—­’

Annabel looked inquiringly.

’Never mind!  The world has beautiful things in it, and one of the most beautiful is hope.’

CHAPTER XVII

ADRIFT