Adderley took off his hat, as Maryllia came across to the gate from the umbrageous shadow of a knot of pine-trees, looking the embodiment of fresh daintiness, in a soft white gown trimmed with wonderfully knotted tufts of palest rose ribbon, and wearing an enchanting ‘poke’ straw hat with a careless knot of pink hyacinths tumbling against her lovely hair.  She was a perfect picture ’after Romney,’ and Adderley thought she knew it.  But there he was wrong.  Maryllia knew little and cared less about her personal appearance.

“Where have you been?” she repeated, taking Cicely round the waist—­ “You wild girl!  Do you know it is lunch time?  I had almost given you up.  Spruce said you had gone into the village—­but more than that she couldn’t tell me.”

“I did go to the village,”—­said Cicely—­“and I went into the church, and played the organ, and helped the children sing a hymn.  And I met the parson, Mr. Walden, and had a talk with him.  Then I started home across the fields, and found this man”—­and she indicated Adderley with a careless nod of her head—­“asleep in a wood.  I almost promised him some lunch—­I didn’t quite—–­”

“My dear Miss Vancourt,”—­protested Adderley—­“Pray do not think of such a thing!—­I would not intrude upon you in this unceremonious way for the world!”

“Why not?” said Maryllia, smiling graciously—­“It will be a pleasure if you will stay to luncheon with us.  Cicely has carte blanche here you know—­genius must have its way!”

“Of course it must!”—­agreed Cicely—­“If genius wants to etand on its head, it must be allowed to make that exhibition of itself lest it should explode.  If genius asks the lame, halt, blind and idiotic into the ancestral halls of Abbot’s Manor, then the lame, halt, blind and idiotic are bound to come.  If genius summons the god Pan to pipe a roundelay, pipings there shall be!  Shall there not, Mr. Pan Adderley?”

Her eyes danced with mirth and mischief, as they flashed from his face to Maryllia’s.  “Genius,”—­she continued—­“can even call forth a parson from the vasty deep if it chooses to do so,—­Mr. Walden is coming to tea this afternoon.”

“Indeed!” And Maryllia’s sweet voice was a trifle cold.  “Did you invite him, Cicely?”

“Yes.  I told him that you thought it rather rude of him not to have come before—–­”

“Oh Cicely!” said Maryllia reproachfully—­“You should not have said that!”

“Why not?  You did think him rude,—­and so did I,—­to refuse two kind invitations from you.  Anyhow he seemed sorry, and said he’d make up for it this afternoon.  He’s really quite good-looking.”

“Quite—­quite!” agreed Julian Adderley—­“I considered him exceptionally so when I first saw him in his own church, opposing a calm front to the intrusive pomposity and appalling ignorance of our venerable acquaintance, Sir Morton Pippitt.  I decided that I had found a Man.  So new!—­so fresh!  That is why I took a cottage for the summer close by, that I might be near the rare specimen!”