’No, it is not needless; and even now you speak in a way which troubles me.  Do not look away from me.  What has my aunt told you about me?’

She turned her face to him.  Her self-command was so complete that not a throb of her leaping heart betrayed itself in vein or muscle.  She even met his eyes with a placid gaze which he felt as a new aspect of her countenance.

‘Mrs. Rossall has never spoken to me of your health,’ she said.

’But my father’s jokes; he has a way of humorous exaggeration.  You of course understand that; you don’t take seriously all he says?’

‘I think I can. distinguish between jest and earnest.’

’For all that, you speak of the recovery of my health as if I were still far from the wholly rational stand-point.  So far from my being mentally unsound, this rest has been a growing-time with me.  Before, I did nothing but heap my memory with knowledge of hooks; now I have had leisure to gather knowledge of a deeper kind.  I was a one-sided academical monster; it needed this new sense to make me human.  The old college life is no longer my ideal; I doubt if it will be possible.  At any rate, I shall hurry over the rest of my course as speedily as may be, that I may begin really to live.  You must credit what I am saying; I want you to give me distinct assurance that you do so.  If I have the least doubt, it will trouble my mind in earnest.’

Miss Hood rose to her feet in that graceful effortless way of which girls have the secret.

‘You attribute a meaning to my words that I never thought of,’ she said, again in the distant respectful manner.

Wilfrid also rose.

’And you give me credit for understanding myself, for being as much master of my mind as I am of my actions?’

‘Surely I do, Mr. Athel.’

’You are going to the house?  It is nearly five o’clock your conscience tells you that a civilised being must drink tea.  I think I shall walk over to Greenhaws; I may as well save Mrs. Winter the trouble of bringing back the children.’

He hesitated before moving away.

’How little that cloud has changed its form!  I should like to stay here and watch it till sunset.  In a week I suppose I shall be looking at some such cloud over Mont Blanc.  And you, in Dunfield.’

‘No, there we have only mill-smoke.’

She smiled, and passed from the hollow to the road.

CHAPTER II

BEATRICE REDWING

Midway in breakfast next morning, at a moment when Mrs. Rossall was describing certain originalities of drawing-room decoration observed on the previous day at a house in town, the half-open door admitted a young lady who had time to glance round the assembled family before her presence was observed.  In appearance she was very interesting.  The tints of her fine complexion were warmed by exercise in the morning air,