Antonia had just returned from lunch on the following day when Owen called her to him; and she hastened to obey the summons, still wearing her hat and coat.

"Oh, Miss Gibbs"—his tone was admirably casual. "I've been wondering whether you would mind helping me this afternoon. I want some books from my house down at Willowhurst to verify some quotations in an article I am writing for the next number of the Bridge."

"Yes, Mr. Rose?"

"I intended first going down in the car for them, but as it seems a pity to bring a lot of old books up to town, I thought if you would come down too, bringing the little Blick typewriter with you, I could get you to copy out the quotations I want, and I needn't take the books away."

Insensibly Toni's eyes brightened.

"Yes, Mr. Rose. I should be very pleased."

"That's right. Well, I'll go out and get some lunch. Will you be ready in half an hour?"

"Yes—I've just time to run through these letters."

"Very well. Au revoir! I'll be back at half-past two."

He went out, and Antonia joyfully pirouetted round the room before settling to work—somewhat to the surprise of Barry, who entered at that moment.

"Hallo, Miss Gibbs—practising the turkey-trot, or what?"

She stopped, blushing hotly, and tried in vain to look unconcerned.

"No, Mr. Raymond. Only—Mr. Rose wants me to motor down to Willowhurst with him about some books—and it's such a lovely day!"

"You like motoring?" Barry could not resist a sympathetic smile.

"Oh, I just love it!" She clasped her hands in rapture. "Of course, I've only been in taxis and char-À-bancs and things, but I've always wanted to go in a real motor-car—a private one, I mean!"

"Have you never been in one?" Her childish confession made Barry feel half pitiful, half dismayed.

"No, how should I?" She laughed, showing her pretty teeth whole-heartedly. "You know girls in my position don't go about in motors! Of course"—with one of her sudden changes of mood she paled and spoke slowly—"if my father had lived things would have been different."

"You lived in Italy together?"

"Yes." She sank into a chair, and went on speaking dreamily, her chin cradled in her hollowed hands. "We lived in a village not far from Naples. Oh, how beautiful Italy is in the spring, when the pink almond-blossom makes the hill-sides look like a great rose-garden ... and the oranges and lemons flame out among the dark-green leaves—and the roads are hot and white, and the blue sea lies at the back of everything, sparkling in the sunshine...."

She paused, but Barry, fascinated by this revelation of a depth, almost a poetry, in the nature he had thought shallow and commonplace, said nothing; and after a second she continued.

"There was a steep hill behind our little house, and sometimes the sheep that browsed there would stray ... so that the boy would sit and pipe to them to come back. I used to watch him pipe, and make a garland of vine-leaves and put it on his curls, and my father would laugh and call him Pan, and say he was really thousands of years old ... and the sheep would come up the slope looking so white against the green, and the air would be full of the smell of the violets they crushed beneath their feet...."

Again she paused, and this time Barry prompted her.

"And when he had found his flock, what did your boy-Pan do then?"

"Then he would drive them away over the hill-side, and we would hear his pipe growing fainter and fainter in the distance, until it died away altogether...."

She sprang up suddenly.

"Oh, Mr. Raymond, what nonsense I'm talking! That life's over and done with, and I've all these letters to copy!"

"All right—I won't interrupt!" He took up some papers. "But just tell me this. Do you ever want to go back to Italy?"

She hesitated, considering.

"No, I think not," she said at last. "You see, it would all be different. My father wouldn't be there, nor the Padre—and even old Fiammetta may be dead by now."

"But the place would be the same—the sea as blue!"

"Ah, I should like to see the sea!" She spoke softly. "Do you know I've only seen the sea once since I came to England—when we went to Southend for the day. And there it was all cold and grey—and the sands were mud ... it wasn't a bit like my sea, and I wished I'd never seen it."

There were actually tears in her eyes, and Barry cursed himself for a fool, as he went rather absently into his own room, leaving her to her work—which work was done none the less carefully because of the vague longings which the conversation had aroused in the worker's breast.

Punctually at two-thirty Owen returned, and Toni ran down the steps with a smiling face from which all traces of tears had long since vanished.

The car was waiting in the dingy street, and Toni's foot was actually on the step when she turned and looked at Owen with a kind of desperate appeal in her eyes.

"Mr. Rose, do you drive the car yourself?"

"Yes. I sit in front, you know—ah, would you like to sit with me?"

"May I?" Her accent was acceptance enough; and two minutes later Toni, as happy as a queen, was installed by the driver's side, and the car began to glide faster and faster down the street on its way to the open country beyond the town.

When they had gone a little distance Owen turned to look at his passenger, and for a second his heart stood still at the expression on her face. Surely no girl would look so rapturously happy unless some magic were at work....

"Are you warm enough? There's a big coat in the car." He spoke abruptly, but the girl shook her head gratefully.

"No, I'm quite warm, thank you."

She had tied on her soft little hat with a scarf of some thin material which framed her face very satisfactorily, and Owen did not press the question.

On and on sped the car, through Putney and Richmond, on past Feltham and Staines, eating up the miles so fast that before they knew it they were out in the country, flying along the level road between hedges whose green had not as yet become dusty with the summer's traffic.

It was a glorious afternoon in early May, and the Thames valley was at its best. On either hand were fields sown thick with creamy daisies and yellow buttercups. Down in a marshy hollow they caught a glimpse of a carpet of golden kingcups, and once they passed a tiny dell in whose very heart an azure mist whispered of bluebells; while the blackthorn and the may made the air fragrant for miles. The birds were singing their hearts out in the mellow sunshine, and now and again the cuckoo's call came floating over the meadows from copse or spinney.

Ever and anon as they shot through some village hamlet they caught glimpses of orchards in full blossom, the pink and white bloom standing out against the pale blue of the sky with the effect of some delicate Japanese painting; and in all the little gardens flowers rioted joyously.

To Toni, spending her life in dingy Brixton, this afternoon was a red-letter day. The soft, clean air which blew in her face was different from the stagnant air of the Brixton streets; the scent of flowers was grateful after the odours of the City, and the vision, now and then, of the flashing river was a delight to eyes tired with much staring at ugly houses and shops.

If Toni said little during that magic excursion, it was not shyness alone which sealed her lips; and although he cast a look now and then at his companion, Owen was too considerate to break into her raptures with questioning words.

Only when they were approaching their destination did he begin to point out the various features of the landscape.

"That village over there is Willgate, noted for an old Saxon arch in its church. My mother used to go over there to evening service, I remember. She liked it better than our own church—the one you can just see peeping between the trees. The village—Willowhurst, I mean—lies round this bend. It's quite a rural-looking place, when you remember that after all it is not an hour's journey from Waterloo."

The car glided round the bend as he spoke, and Toni saw the village lying in the afternoon sunshine, which winked back from the windows of the little houses, built in a queer, old-fashioned manner round a small green. There was a pleasant, old-world look about the place which was oddly charming; and Toni was quite sorry when the car left the little green behind. But in another minute they were on a stretch of white road bordered by a high wall, behind which tall trees stood like sentinels; and Toni caught her breath as Owen said, in a voice which he tried, vainly, to keep steady:

"See, there's Greenriver—my home—beyond the trees."

They had reached the high gates in the wall, and when once they had entered and were rolling up the broad avenue Toni gazed eagerly in the direction he had indicated.

Greenriver was a stately old place enough. It had been built in the days of Queen Bess; and was just such a house as that in which Justice Shallow might have entertained Falstaff—a long grey building with a porch in the centre and a huge gable at either end—a house with deep-mullioned windows and large stacks of chimney-pots.

The house faced the river, to which it led by a terrace of velvety turf, broken here and there by gay flower-beds; while the real gardens lay at the other side of the building. Here beauty and dignity had joined hands, as it were, to preserve the stately loveliness of the grounds, under whose tall elms many a joyous company must have roamed when the river was the highway of elegance and fashion, and great barges floated down the Thames bearing Royal personages reclining on their couches covered with cloth of gold. Here on summer evenings the nightingales sang to the roses for which the gardens were famous; and for centuries the big white owls had hooted from their nests in the tree-tops, or flown, like pale ghosts, across the dusky paths.

The grounds were indeed noted all along the river for the magnificence of their green, velvety lawns, the size and beauty of the flowers in parterre and bed, the wonderful completeness—and in some cases the antiquity—of the contents of the famous herbaceous border; and Toni never forgot the sensation of awe which overwhelmed her as she realized that this glorious place belonged to the man beside her.

She spoke a little shyly as the car came to a standstill at the foot of the steps leading to the big door.

"This is your house?"

"Yes, this is Greenriver." He helped her out of the car. "And here is my old friend Mrs. Blades coming to meet us."

An elderly, rather prim-looking woman came forward as Owen advanced, and in her eyes shone a welcoming light.

"Come in, sir. We were beginning to wonder if you were coming to-day."

"Yes—started rather late." Owen gave her hand a friendly shake. "But we shan't have to go back just yet. I want to have a chat with you by and bye, Mrs. Blades. This young lady, Miss Gibbs, has kindly come down to help me with some work."

"I'm sure the young lady is very welcome," was Mrs. Blades' old-fashioned reply. "Shan't I make you a cup o' tea, sir, first of all?"

"Well, a cup of tea would be nice ... but I think, if Miss Gibbs isn't tired, we'll get on with our work first, and then we'll enjoy it better. Eh, Miss Gibbs?"

Miss Gibbs agreed; and five minutes later she was installed, with her typewriter, in the library. Owen busied himself, for a few moments, at the shelves, searching for the books he wanted; and Toni spent the time in gazing round her, wonder, admiration and awe mingling in her gaze.

The room was large and lofty and the big mullioned windows looked out upon a beautiful terrace, bordered with wallflowers, jonquils, and masses of dancing daffodils. The grass, smooth as velvet, led to a stone balustrade, beyond which lay the river, sparkling in the sunshine, whilst beyond that again were green fields, broken here and there by clumps of majestic trees, the fields in their turn leading to a range of distant, misty, blue hills.

The room itself was second only in interest to the view. In all her life Toni had never entered such a room—had never imagined, indeed, that private houses boasted such apartments.

The furniture was all of dark-green leather—the big saddle-bag chairs, the low divan and the smaller chairs all being upholstered in the same material, while the wall was distempered a lighter shade of green, and the carpet was of a darker tone. In one of the deep window embrasures was a bureau, of just the right height to allow anyone sitting before it to enjoy the prospect without; while the table at which Toni sat was a large, heavy affair, evidently intended for serious work.

But the generally sombre tone of the room formed an excellent background for the books which lined its walls. Shelf after shelf of them rose from the floor, almost to the ceiling; and since many were bound in soft, rich colours, they struck a delightful note in the rather dusky whole.

There were books bound in leather, dark-brown calf, soft red or blue morocco; richly-tooled volumes, slim books clothed in tan or purple suÈde, gay with gold edges and lettering; priceless old volumes, rare black-letter editions, poets, classics, all the standard novels.... Toni had never seen so many books in her life; and it must be confessed that she regarded them with something akin to awe.

Who in the world could wish to read these hundreds of volumes? For all their beautiful bindings she had a conviction that the contents would be appallingly dull; and her eyes fled gladly to the more congenial scene outside the windows where the flowers danced gaily in the sunshine and a little skiff floated by on the shimmering river, like some magic boat gliding to a haven in fairyland.

Presently Owen approached the table, bearing an armful of thin books, bound for the most part in soft fawn suÈde.

"Look, Miss Gibbs, these are the verses I want you to copy." He pointed out the poems, and gave her one or two instructions, while Toni, conscious that she had been dreaming away her time, hastily uncovered her typewriter and took up a sheet of paper.

"If you'll do these, I'll go and have a chat with old Mrs. Blades," said Owen presently. "Then we'll have tea, and if there's time I'll show you the gardens. They are really worth seeing."

She thanked him shyly and he went out. In the doorway he paused, looking back at her as she sat among the books; and if she had looked up she could not have failed to observe something odd in the expression with which he was regarding her.

But she did not look up; and after a few seconds' scrutiny he went out quietly and closed the door.

It did not take Toni very long to finish her task. Almost as she took the last sheet of paper out of the typewriter the door opened to admit Owen and a staid-looking maid with a tea-tray.

"Well, Miss Gibbs, finished?" Owen came forward with a smile. "That's good! Now you shall have some tea to refresh you after your toil. Let me see, Kate, where shall we have it?"

The maid suggested that the table in the far window would be suitable; and as the afternoon sunshine still streamed in, making a pleasant warmth, Owen agreed heartily.

Evidently Mrs. Blades had not been taken unprepared; for there were dainty sandwiches, hot cakes, and a big and substantial-looking seed-loaf, which was, so Owen informed his guest, his housekeeper's special pride.

"Now"—Kate had withdrawn after placing the massive silver tea-pot on the tray—"will you pour out for me, Miss Gibbs? And I'll hand the cakes."

Blushing gloriously, Toni slipped into the seat behind the tray. In honour of the fine day she had discarded her black frock for a serge skirt and a girlish-looking white blouse, open at the throat; and now that she had thrown aside her veil, her black hair, prettily loosened beneath her soft little hat, made an ebony frame for her vivid face.

As he watched her gravely attending to the duties of the tea-tray, Owen told himself that he might have made a worse choice.

He had long ago surprised her secret—although Toni had no idea of her self-betrayal. At this stage of her development Toni was pure emotion—a mere lamp through which love might shine unchecked, casting its beams unashamedly upon the object of its devotion. Later she might learn, as many women do, to interpose a veil between her soul and the world. The lamp would shine with a tempered beam, its glow moderated to a mere even, more tranquil light, and none would recognize the quality of its burning.

But at present Toni's love was so whole-hearted, so innocently, pathetically intense that it was no wonder Owen had divined both its nature and its object long ago.

Well, to a heart rendered sore by a woman's callousness, such a warm, eager devotion as this was inexpressibly attractive; and if Owen's eyes were blinded by suffering, there was surely a chance that Toni's soft fingers laid upon their lids might prolong the merciful myopia.

When tea was over there came a sudden little silence. The dusk was falling; and the garden wore a ghostly look; while the river lay passively unreflecting beneath the twilit sky.

The atmosphere of the room changed with the passing of the sunlight—grew tense, electric, almost, one would have said, expectant; and Owen realized that the moment for which he waited had come.

Toni, having finished her tea, was sitting rather slackly in her chair, gazing dreamily out of the window; and Owen hesitated for a minute before he spoke. She looked so young, so wistful, so helpless. It was almost unfair, selfish, to speak to the child—and then, suddenly, he knew that selfish or no, he must put an end to his own solitary sore-heartedness.

"Toni"—she looked up as he spoke, and his utterance of her name set the whole atmosphere throbbing with wild, sweet possibilities—"I want to ask you something."

She did not speak, only her eyes fastened on his face.

"Do you think, Toni"—for a moment he faltered, then plunged bravely on—"you could ever bring yourself to marry me? Oh, I know you're surprised—I ought not to spring it on you like this—but if you will be my wife I will do my best to make you happy."

There was a silence. Suddenly an owl flew, hooting, past the window, and in the dusk his white wings looked ghostly, unreal.

Then, quite quietly, Toni spoke.

"Mr. Rose, do you mean it? You want to marry me?"

"Yes, dear." For an instant he spoke as one speaks to a child, so powerful was the illusion of youth in the large-eyed Toni just then. "Well, what do you say? Will you have me?"

He was still sitting in the big chair opposite to her, one hand on the arm, the other clenched on his knee; and he was unprepared for Toni's answer.

With a sudden rush she was out of her chair, and the next moment she was kneeling beside him, her face all aglow with love and wonder.

"You mean it?" She could only, it seemed, question his meaning. "But—how did you know I loved you, Mr. Rose? I never let you see—did I?"

With that soft, sparkling face upturned to his, those Italian eyes gazing at him with an intensity of appeal in their liquid depths, one answer alone was possible.

"No, Toni, you never let me see that! But if it's true—if you do love me a little—well, is it—yes?"

For answer she suddenly laid her head on his knee and burst into a passion of wild sobbing. Poor, emotional, overwrought little Toni! Why she wept she had no idea, but it was the same emotion which had made her, as a child, weep at the sight of a group of violets growing in the grass, at the sound of the shepherd's pipe, the scent of the sea-laden breeze. Although her heart was so full of bliss that she could scarcely bear it, there was a wild, inexplicable sadness in it too, which tears alone could assuage; and though she tried to recapture her self-control, it was useless until she had cried away the first bewilderment.

But Owen, unused to the complex Southern nature, was thoroughly nonplussed by her tears. In vain he besought her to calm herself, begged her to listen to him, to refuse him if the thought of his offer made her miserable. Toni only cried the harder; and at last, uncertain of his ground, but feeling that something must be done, Owen stooped down and lifted her bodily on to his knee.

Once in his arms, her tears ceased as if by magic. She lay against his heart like a child, and as he felt her little body in his arms a new feeling of pity, almost of gratitude, awoke in his heart.

If his love meant so much to her—then it should be hers—if indeed love could be bestowed at will. In any case he would marry her and devote his life to making her happy; and in his curiously exalted state of mind Owen quite lost sight of the fact that when one is the lover and the other the beloved, between the two there is often a great gulf fixed.

When at last Owen roused the girl, who had sobbed herself into quiescence in his arms, the room was nearly dark.

"Come, Toni, it's getting cold and dark in here. What do you say, shall we get Mrs. Blades to give us a little dinner and go home by moonlight—or would you rather start at once?"

"I would rather go now." She spoke in a low voice, like a child that is uncertain of its treatment; and Owen guessed she was ashamed of her tears.

He set himself to reassure her.

"Well, just as you like. Wait a moment, though. I'll light a candle, and you shall put your hat straight, and tie on that precious veil of yours first."

While she tidied herself, rather self-consciously, before a large oval mirror, Owen gathered up the papers she had typewritten; and when he turned towards her at last she was able to conjure up a rather wan little smile.

"Good girl!" He laid his hand kindly on her arm. "Now we'll be off—but first, do you mind if I let old Blades into our secret? She's a faithful old soul, though her temper's a bit crabby, and she'll be awfully pleased!"

She assented, of course; and opening the door Owen led her across the dim hall towards the kitchen regions.

Evidently the magic hour of lighting-up was at hand, for when they had passed through the green baize door which shut off the servants' premises, they found themselves in a brightly-lit passage, at the end of which Mrs. Blades' voice could be heard energetically exhorting a maid to "be quick and take these lamps."

"Come along, we'll pay her a visit in her room," said Owen, his eyes sparkling with fun; and drawing Toni's arm through his he ran with her down the passage, and drew up finally in a large square room where Mrs. Blades was at work.

In spite of her shyness Toni was lost in wonder at the nature of that work. The room itself was lighted with gas, flaring in an iron cage; but on the table in front of Mrs. Blades were no less than ten small oil-lamps, evidently intended to hang against the wall, and fashioned in some wrought metal which gave them a curiously mediÆval look.

"Hallo, Mrs. Blades!" Owen's voice made her turn round quickly. "The Ten Little Ladies going as strong as ever, I see!"

"Yes, Mr. Owen, they're still on the go." She regarded the lamps affectionately. "At first Mr. Leetham used to say a good big lamp would be best, at the head of the stairs; but afterwards he got to like the Little Ladies, and we've had 'em every night."

"We'll have to go on having them," declared Owen. "Look, Toni, they're really quite pretty, aren't they? And thanks to Mrs. Blades they give a jolly good light."

"But—the 'Little Ladies'?" Toni looked, as she felt, puzzled.

"Yes, it was a fancy of my father's. He would never have gas anywhere except in the kitchens; and the long gallery upstairs, where all the bedrooms are, was always as dark as Erebus." He laughed, catching sight of the blank look on Mrs. Blades' face at the word. "So my mother invented these lamps, years ago when I was a tiny kid, and every night they are fixed at intervals along the walls of the gallery."

"But the name?"

"Oh, I don't know who first christened them, but they've always been known as the Ten Little Ladies—and always will be, I suppose. Eh, Mrs. Blades?"

"So long as I'm here, sir, I hope they will be," rejoined Mrs. Blades somewhat formally; and something in her tone made Owen remember his resolve.

He looked round. The door was open into the passage, a rosy-cheeked maid waiting, apparently, to carry off the tray with the Little Ladies; but on Owen approaching with the intention of closing the door she withdrew modestly out of earshot.

Coming back to the table Owen took one of Toni's hands in his and turned to the old housekeeper, who glanced with sudden shrewdness at the girl's shy face.

"Mrs. Blades," said Owen quietly, "Miss Gibbs has promised to marry me; and I hope that before many weeks are over we shall come down to live at Greenriver. Well, what do you say? Will you welcome us when we come?"

The half-boyish, half-masterful tone in which he spoke seemed too much for the old woman, who had watched Owen grow from boy to man, and now, after a lapse of years, saw him in his manhood. She looked first at him, then at the pale girl by his side, and her features worked oddly.

"Come, Mrs. Blades!" Owen had had enough of tears for one afternoon. "Cheer up! Don't look as if we were going to cut off your head! That's a poor welcome to Miss Gibbs!"

Thus reproved, the housekeeper did her best to conjure up a more cheerful expression; and managed presently to shake Toni's cold little hand with a respectful word or two; after which Owen discovered that it was high time to go.

Five minutes later Toni was snugly packed into the car again; and Owen was about to take his seat when he remembered that he had left the typewritten sheets in the housekeeper's room.

"I'll run back for them, Toni." He jumped down from the step. "I won't be a moment. You don't mind waiting?"

"Of course not!" She smiled up at him with dewy eyes. "Don't hurry—it's so lovely here in the dusk—the flowers smell so sweet."

Re-entering the house, Owen ran down the passage with hasty feet. Mrs. Blades, who had a tendency to what she called "chronical brownkitis," had not ventured to brave the night air; and Owen found her still regarding the Little Ladies, who burned trimly on the tray before her.

"All right, Mrs. Blades—I've only left some papers!" He snatched them up as he spoke, and crammed them into the pocket of his leather coat. "That's all—now I'm really off."

He patted her carelessly on the shoulder as he passed her; but to his surprise she put out a veined hand to stay his progress.

"Mr. Owen"—her voice shook—"do you really mean that you're going to marry the young lady?"

"Of course, Blades." Unconsciously Owen pulled himself together. "Why should I say such a thing if I did not mean it?"

"Because..." the old woman faltered "... Miss Gibbs ain't the sort of lady you ought to marry. She ... she's not like the other lady you were going to bring here as mistress of Greenriver ... the one as was presented at Court with all them lovely feathers in her hair."

An expression such as she had never seen before crossed Owen's face. He shook off her hand impatiently.

"Oh, you're an old silly, Blades." His voice was grating. "Miss Gibbs is a thousand times more suitable to be the mistress of Greenriver. The—the other lady thought very small beer of us all down here—she wasn't our sort, I assure you!"

"Neither is this one." The old woman stuck to her guns with the obstinacy of age. "Mr. Owen, I remember your father bringing home his bride—a girl she was, only eighteen—but the highest lady in the land couldn't have been evened to her. Miss Gibbs is pretty and a good girl, I'm sure, but—but she ain't like your mother, Mr. Owen; and you ought to look higher when you marry than her!"

"Don't be a fool, Blades!" Owen spoke angrily now. "If I think Miss Gibbs good enough to be my wife that's quite sufficient for everyone. After all, I'm not such a great catch," he added bitterly.

"Nay, Mr. Owen, don't be vexed with me!" Too late the old woman regretted her foolish words. "I'm growing old, and maybe I'm in my dotage ... ah, he's gone—I've driven the lad away with my folly!"

It was indeed so. Owen had flung out of the door angrily; and as she listened, half-afraid, she heard his steps receding down the passage towards the hall. There was impatience in his very tread; for, truth to tell, Owen felt a kind of hot anger welling in his heart as he remembered the words she had spoken.

At first he was merely annoyed at what he called her presumption—induced, he supposed, by her long connection with the family. But suddenly a feeling of vague uneasiness descended upon him, and he paused before going out to join Toni in the car.

"She only saw Toni for a moment—barely heard her speak—and yet she speaks as though I were making an unsuitable marriage." He frowned thoughtfully, anger dying before some feeling whose nature he could not, yet, recognize. "I wonder—what could she mean?"

He stood in the quiet hall, fighting down a host of surmises, of unwelcome doubts which sprang, it would seem, out of the twilight, brought to birth by an old woman's homely words; and in those illuminating seconds Owen allowed himself to wonder whether, after all, he had committed an action which he would find cause to regret.

But somehow the idea seemed a treachery towards the girl who sat waiting so trustfully, so happily for his coming; and with a sudden uplifting of his head, Owen went resolutely out to the car.

But Mrs. Blades, left alone, shod a few of the difficult tears of age as she went over the little scene. She felt suddenly old; and for the first time in her busy, self-satisfied life she questioned her own wisdom.

Then she too shook off her uncomfortable thoughts, and calling the rosy Maggie to her, delivered into her hands the Ten Little Ladies, who still waited patiently upon the tray for their nightly release.