personage in the village—­his village—­of St. Rest,—­and that he had wished—­Ah! what had he wished?  Back, O teazing reminder of the grudging and suspicious spirit that had so lately animated the soul of a Christian cleric!  Yet it had to be admitted, albeit now reluctantly, that he had actually wished the rightful mistress of Abbot’s Manor had never returned to it!  Smitten with sorest compunction at the recollection of his former blind prejudice against the woman he had then never seen, he walked by her side over the warm soft grass, listening with a somewhat preoccupied air to the remarks she was making concerning Cicely Bourne, and the great hopes she entertained of the girl’s future brilliant career.

“Really,” she declared, “the only useful thing I have ever done in my life is to rescue Cicely from uncongenial surroundings, and provide her with all she needs for her musical studies.  To help bring out a great genius gives me some little sense of importance, you see!  In myself I am such an utter nonentity.”

She laughed.  Walden looked at her with an earnestness of which he was scarcely conscious.  She coloured a little, and her eyes fell.  Something in the sudden delicate flush of her cheeks and the quick droop of her eyelashes startled him,—­he felt a curious sense of contrition, as though he had given her some indefinable, altogether shadowy cause for that brief discomposure.  The idea that she seemed, even for a second, not quite so much at her ease, restored his own nerve and self-possession, and it was with an almost paternal gentleness that he said.

“Do you really consider yourself a nonentity, Miss Vancourt?  I am sure the society you have left behind you in London does not think you so.”

She opened her sea-blue eyes full upon him.

“Society?  Why do you speak of it?  Its opinion of me or of anyone else, is surely the last thing a sensible man. or woman would care for, I imagine!  One ‘season’ of it was enough for me.  I have unfortunately had several ‘seasons,’ and they were all too many.”

Again Walden looked at her, but this time she did not seem to be aware of his scrutiny.

“Do you take me for a member of the ‘smart’ set, Mr. Walden?” she queried, gaily—­“You are very much mistaken if you do!  I have certainly mixed with it, and know all about it—­much to my regret—­ but I don’t belong to it.  Of course I like plenty of life and amusement, but ‘society’ as London and Paris and New York express it in their modes and manners and ‘functions,’ is to me the dullest form of entertainment in the world.”

Walden was silent.  She gave him a quick side-glance of enquiry.

“I suppose you have been told something about me?” she said—­ “Something which represents me otherwise than as I represent myself.  Have you?”

At this abrupt question John fairly started out of his semi-abstraction in good earnest.

“My dear Miss Vancourt!” he exclaimed, warmly—­“How can you think of such a thing!  I have never heard a word about you, except from good old Mrs. Spruce who knew you as a child, and who loves to recall these days,—­and—­er—­and—–­”