AMONG the neighbours there was none more assiduous in the matter of calls and other friendly manifestations than Mr. Huntly Withells—emphasis on the "ells"—who lived at Guiting Grange, about a couple of miles from Wren's End. Mr. Withells was settled at the Grange some years before Miss Janet Ross left her house to Jan, and he was already a person of importance and influence in that part of the county when Anthony Ross and his daughters first spent a whole summer there.

Mr. Withells proved most neighbourly. He had artistic leanings himself, and possessed some good pictures; among them, one of Anthony's, which naturally proved a bond of union. He did not even so much as sketch, himself—which Anthony considered another point in his favour—but he was a really skilled photographer, possessed the most elaborate cameras, and obtained quite beautiful results.

Since Jan's return from India he had completely won her heart by taking a great many photographs of the children, pictures delightfully natural, and finished as few amateurs contrive to present them.

It was rumoured in Amber Guiting that Mr. Withells' views on the subject of matrimony were "peculiar"; but all the ladies, especially the elderly ladies, were unanimous in declaring that he had a "beautiful mind."

Mrs. Fream, the vicar's wife, timidly confided to Jan that Mr. Withells had told her husband that he cared only for "spiritual marriage"—whatever that might be; and that, as yet, he had met no woman whom he felt would see eye to eye with him on this question. "He doesn't approve of caresses," she added.

"Well, who wants to caress him?" Jan asked bluntly.

Meg declared there was one thing she could not bear about Mr. Withells, and that was the way he shook hands, "exactly as if he had no thumbs. If he's so afraid of touching one as all that comes to, why doesn't he let it alone?"

Yet the apparently thumbless hands were constantly occupied in bearing gifts of all kinds to his friends.

In appearance he was dapper, smallish, without being undersized, always immaculately neat in his attire, with a clean-shaven, serious, rather sallow face, which was inclined to be chubby as to the cheeks. He wore double-sighted pince-nez, and no mortal had ever seen him without them. His favourite writer was Miss Jane Austen, and he deplored the licentious tendency of so much modern literature; frequently, and with flushed countenance, denouncing certain books as an "outrage." He was considered a very well-read man. He disliked anything that was "not quite nice," and detested a strong light, whether it were thrown upon life or landscape; in bright sunshine he always carried a white umbrella lined with green. The game he played best was croquet, and here he was really first class; but he was also skilled in every known form of Patience, and played each evening unless he happened to be dining out.

As regards food he was something of a faddist, and on the subject of fresh air almost a monomaniac. He declared that he could not exist for ten minutes in a room with closed windows, and that the smell of apples made him feel positively faint; moreover, he would mention his somewhat numerous antipathies as though there were something peculiarly meritorious in possessing so many. This made his entertainment at any meal a matter of agitated consideration among the ladies of Amber Guiting.

Nevertheless, he kept an excellent and hospitable table himself, and in no way forced his own taste upon others. He disliked the smell of tobacco and hardly ever drank wine, yet he kept a stock of excellent cigars and his cellar was beyond reproach.

He had been observing Jan for several years, and was rapidly coming to the conclusion that she was an "eminently sensible woman." Her grey hair and the way she had managed everything for her father led him to believe that she was many years older than her real age. Recently he had taken to come to Wren's End on one pretext and another almost every day. He was kind and pleasant to the children, who amused and pleased him—especially little Fay; but he was much puzzled by Meg, whom he had known in pre-cap-and-apron days while she was staying at Wren's End.

He couldn't quite place Meg, and there was an occasional glint in her queer eyes that he found disconcerting. He was never comfortable in her society, for he objected to red hair almost as strongly as to a smell of apples.

He really liked the children, and since he knew he couldn't get Jan without them he was beginning to think that in such a big house as the Grange they would not necessarily be much in the way. He knew nothing whatever about Hugo Tancred.

Jan satisfied his fastidious requirements. She was dignified, graceful, and, he considered, of admirable parts. He felt that in a very little while he could imbue Jan with his own views as to the limitations and delicate demarcations of such a marriage as he contemplated.

She was so sensible.

Meanwhile the object of these kind intentions was wholly unaware of them. She was just then very much absorbed in her own affairs and considerably worried about Meg's. For Captain Middleton's week-end was repeated on the following Saturday and extended far into the next week. He came constantly to Wren's End, where the children positively adored him, and he seemed to possess an infallible instinct which led him to the village whensoever Meg and her charges had business there.

On such occasions Meg was often quite rude to Captain Middleton, but the children and William more than atoned for her coldness by the warmth of their welcome, and he attached himself to them.

In fact, as regards the nursery party at Wren's End, Miles strongly resembled William before a fire—you might drive him away ninety and nine times, he always came thrusting back with the same expression of deprecating astonishment that you could be other than delighted to see him.

Whither was it all tending? Jan wondered.

No further news had come from Hugo; Peter, she supposed, had sailed and was due in London at the end of the week.

Then Mr. Huntly Withells asked her one afternoon to bicycle over to see his spring irises—he called them "irides," and invariably spoke of "croci," and "delphinia"—and as Meg was taking the children to tea at the vicarage, Jan went.

To her surprise, she found herself the sole guest, but supposed she was rather early and that his other friends hadn't come yet.

They strolled about the gardens, so lovely in their spring blossoming, and it happened that from one particular place they got a specially good view of the house.

"How much larger it is than you would think, looking at the front," Jan remarked. "You don't see that wing at all from the drive."

"There's plenty of room for nephews and nieces," Mr. Withells said jocularly.

"Have you many nephews and nieces?" she asked, turning to look at him, for there was something in the tone of his voice that she could not understand.

"Not of my own," he replied, still in that queer, unnatural voice, "but you see my wife might have ... if I was married."

"Are you thinking of getting married?" she asked, with the real interest such a subject always rouses in woman.

"That depends," Mr. Withells said consciously, "on whether the lady I have in mind ... er ... shall we sit down, Miss Ross? It's rather hot in the walks."

"Oh, not yet," Jan exclaimed. She couldn't think why, but she began to feel uncomfortable. "I must see those Darwin tulips over there."

"It's very sunny over there," he objected. "Come down the nut-walk and see the myosotis arvensis; it is already in bloom, the weather has been so warm.

"Miss Ross," Mr. Withells continued seriously, as they turned into the nut-walk which led back towards the house, "we have known each other for a considerable time...."

"We have," said Jan, as he had paused, evidently expecting a reply.

"And I have come to have a great regard for you...."

Again he paused, and Jan found herself silently whispering, "Curtsy while you're thinking—it saves time," but she preserved an outward silence.

"You are, if I may say so, the most sensible woman of my acquaintance."

"Thank you," said Jan, but without enthusiasm.

"We are neither of us quite young"—(Mr. Withells was forty-nine, but it was a little hard on Jan)—"and I feel sure that you, for instance, would not expect or desire from a husband those constant outward demonstrations of affection such as handclaspings and kisses, which are so foolish and insanitary."

Jan turned extremely red and walked rather faster.

"Do not misunderstand me, Miss Ross," Mr. Withells continued, looking with real admiration at her downcast, rosy face—she must be quite healthy he thought, to look so clean and fresh always—"I lay down no hard-and-fast rules. I do not say should my wife desire to kiss me sometimes, that I should ... repulse her."

Jan gasped.

"But I have the greatest objection, both on sanitary and moral grounds to——"

"I can't imagine anyone wanting to kiss you," Jan interrupted furiously; "you're far too puffy and stippled."

And she ran from him as though an angry bull were after her.

Mr. Withells stood stock-still where he was, in pained astonishment.

He saw the fleeing fair one disappear into the distance and in the shortest time on record he heard the clanging of her bicycle bell as she scorched down his drive.

"Puffy and stippled"—"Puffy and stippled"!

Mr. Withells repeated to himself this rudely personal remark as he walked slowly towards the house.

What could she mean?

And what in the world had he said to make her so angry?

Women were really most unaccountable.

He ascended his handsome staircase and went into his dressing-room, and there he sought his looking-glass, which stood in the window, and surveyed himself critically. Yes, his cheeks were a bit puffy near the nostrils, and, as is generally the case in later life, the pores of the skin were a bit enlarged, but for all that he was quite a personable man.

He sighed. Miss Ross, he feared, was not nearly so sensible as he had thought.

It was distinctly disappointing.

For the first mile and a quarter Jan scorched all she knew. The angry blood was thumping in her ears and she exclaimed indignantly at intervals, "How dared he! How dared he!"

Then she punctured a tyre.

There was no hope of getting it mended till she reached Wren's End, when Earley would do it for her. As she pushed her bicycle along the lane she recovered her sense of humour and she laughed. And presently she became aware of a faint, sweet, elusive perfume from some flowering shrub on the other side of somebody's garden wall.

It strongly resembled the smell of a blossoming tree that grew on Ridge Road, Malabar Hill. And in one second Jan was in Bombay, and was standing in the moonlight, looking up into a face that was neither puffy nor stippled nor prim; but young and thin and worn and very kind. And the exquisite understanding of that moment came back to her, and her eyes filled with tears.

Yet in another moment she was again demanding indignantly, "How dared he!"

She went straight to her room when she got in, and, like Mr. Withells, she went and looked at herself in the glass.

Unlike Mr. Withells, she saw nothing there to give her any satisfaction. She shook her head at the person in the glass and said aloud:

"If that's all you get by trying to be sensible, the sooner you become a drivelling idiot the better for your peace of mind—and your vanity."

The person in the glass shook her head back at Jan, and Jan turned away thoroughly disgusted with such a futile sort of tu quoque.