’Oh, we’ll have that this afternoon; you may talk of it now, and I shall relish it in anticipation.  Or, better still, sit down and tell us old stories about Egypt, and let us forget the age we live in.’

‘What is amiss with the age?’ inquired Mr. Athel, who stood smoking a cigar and was in his wonted state of satisfaction with himself and the universe.

’Everything is amiss.  If you had been with me yesterday in a street I was visiting, not a quarter of a mile from home—­But I’m going to forget all that now.  How deliciously warm it is here in the shade!  I must have a ham. mock in our garden at Cowes.’

‘When do you go back?’ Mr. Athel asked.

’In about a fortnight.  It has done mother no end of good; don’t you think she looks remarkably well, Mrs. Rossall?  I’m afraid she finds it a little dull though.’

When his father had returned to the house, Wilfrid sat en the grass and rested his head against the arm of the low garden chair in which Mrs. Rossall was reclining.  The sound of a grass-cutter alone mingled with the light rustling of the trees.  It was one of those perfect summer mornings when the sun’s rays, though streaming from a cloudless sky, are tempered by a gentle haze in the upper regions of the air, when the zenith has a tinge of violet and on the horizon broods a reddish mist.  From this part of the garden only a glimpse of the house was visible; an upper window with white curtains, cool, peaceful.  All else on every side was verdure and bloom.

‘Is it possible,’ Beatrice asked, when there had been silence for a few moments, ’that I can have met Miss Hood anywhere before to-day?  Her face is strangely familiar to me.’

‘She has never been in London before she came to us,’ said Mrs. Rossall.

‘But you have relatives in Dunfield, I think?’ remarked Wilfrid.

‘To be sure,’ said his aunt; ’she comes from Dunfield, in Yorkshire.  Do you think you can have met her there?’

‘Ah, that explains it,’ Beatrice cried eagerly.  ’I knew I had seen her, and I know now where it was.  She gave lessons to my uncle’s children.  I saw her when I was staying there the last time, three—­no, four years ago.  I can’t recall her by her name, but her face, oh, I remember it as clearly as possible.’

‘What a memory you have, Beatrice!’ said Mrs. Rossall.

‘I never forget a face that strikes me.’

‘In what way did Miss Hood’s face strike you?’ Wilfrid asked, as if in idle curiosity, and with some of the banter which always marked his tone to Beatrice.

’You would like some deep, metaphysical reason, but I am not advanced enough for that.  I don’t suppose I thought much about her at the time, but the face has stayed in my mind.  But how old is she?’

‘Two-and-twenty,’ said Mrs. Rossall, smiling.

’A year older than myself; my impression was that she was more than that.  I think I only saw her once; she was with us at lunch one day.  We spoke of her shyness, I remember; she scarcely said a word all the time.’