Mrs. Morres was looking benignantly, for her, at Sir Robin Drummond.

"Well, I must say I'm pleased to see you," she said. "It's very handsome of you, too, to give up the affairs of the nation for an old woman like me. How do you suppose things are getting on without you?"

"The House is not sitting this afternoon. You know it rises for the Easter vacation to-morrow."

"On Thursday I go down to Hazels. I wanted that bad person, Mary Gray, to come with me. She says she has to work at her book. Did you ever hear such stuff and nonsense? As though the world can't get on without one young woman's book. I told her she could do it at Hazels. She says she couldn't—that she'll have to be out all day long. London will not tempt her out, she says. Is she to go bending her back and dimming her eyes while the lambs are at play in the fields and the primroses thick in the woods?"

"She's an obstinate person, Mrs. Morres. When she has made up her mind to do a thing——"

"Ah! you know her pretty well."

"We first met about nine years ago."

"Dear me! I had no idea that you were such old friends. I thought you met first in this house."

"Lady Anne Hamilton, the old lady who adopted Miss Gray, was my mother's friend."

He said nothing about the fact that twelve hours ago he had not known Mary Gray for the child he had played with for one afternoon, nor of the long gap between that occasion and their next meeting. Not from any disingenuousness; but he had a feeling that he liked to keep that meeting of long ago to himself.

"Dear me, to be sure you would be interested in Mary. You would know a good deal about her. Nine years—it is a long time."

If he had been the most consummate plotter he could not better have paved the way for the suggestion he was about to make.

"Put off your return to Hazels till Saturday morning. I want to take you and Miss Gray into the country for a day on Thursday."

"Indeed, young man! And wait for the Saturday crowd of holiday-makers! A nice figure I should be struggling among them."

"I will be at Victoria to see you off."

"Oh, you needn't do that." Mrs. Morres turned about with the inconsequence of her sex. "I've brought one of the maids up with me. She will take care of me better than most men. She is alarming, this good Susan, to the people who don't know her. But I thought you were going abroad?"

"So I am. Saturday morning will do me very well."

"How did you know I was in town? No one is supposed to. All the blinds are down in front and will be till her Ladyship returns."

"Miss Gray told me. I saw her yesterday."

She looked at him sharply. His honest, plain face reassured her. A friendship of nine years, too. What trouble could there possibly arise after a friendship of nine years? Mary must know that he was all but engaged to his cousin.

"Does she approve of the country trip?"

"I have not asked her. I left that to you to do. She has been shut up in London all the winter. She needs a breath of country air."

"So she does. She shows the London winter, though you may not see it. Very well, you shall take us both into the country on Thursday. Mary will not dream of refusing me."

"That is it. She means to spend those six days between Thursday and Wednesday toiling at her book. I have heard her say that she will spend Thursday at the British Museum."

"Stuff and nonsense, she shan't! The world will do just as well without the book. She must come to Hazels on Saturday. You will help me to persuade her?"

"I will do my best. How did you leave Hazels?"

"Lovely. For the rest, a wilderness of despairing dogs. They will forgive me if I bring back Mary. By the way, what have you got for me to do on Friday? If you will keep me in town when all the shops are shut! Not that it matters. I've finished all my shopping. But am I to spend my Good Friday here, in this room? London streets are no place for a poor woman on Good Friday."

"Will you go to church? There is a service at a church near here, with Bach's Passion music."

"I should like to, of all things. Afterwards, perhaps, Mary would give us tea at her eyrie. You and she must dine with me. She is coming this evening to dinner. Come back to dinner at half-past seven and help me to persuade her. I can only give you a chop. Some mysterious person in the lower region cooks for me. She is the plainest of the plain."

"It will be a banquet, with you."

Sir Robin was not a young man who paid compliments easily. When he did pay one it had always an air of sincerity. Mrs. Morres looked pleased. She was very fond of Robin Drummond.

When he and Mary met at the door a few hours later he made a jest about their dining together again so soon, and they laughed about it—to be sure, that dinner at the restaurant was a secret, something that did not belong to the conventional life. There was the air of a little understanding between them when they presented themselves to Mrs. Morres in the book-room which she used for all purposes of a sitting-room during her flying visit to town. It was a pleasant room, with book-cases all round it filled with green glass in a lattice of brass-work. The books were hidden by the glass, but it reflected every movement of a bird or a twig or a cloud outside like green waters. The ceiling was domed like a sky and painted in sunny Italian scenery. It was not dull in the book-room on the dullest day.

"Did you come together?" Mrs. Morres asked curiously.

"I swear we did not," Sir Robin replied, with mock intensity. "I came from the east, Miss Gray from the west. We met on your doorstep."

"You looked as if you were enjoying a joke when you came in."

"There was time for one between the ringing of the bell and the opening of the door."

"Ah, you see, the people downstairs are very old."

Mary allowed herself to be persuaded to the country expedition next day. The spring had been calling to her, calling to her to come out of London to the fields. More, she consented to go to Hazels on the Saturday. The spring had disturbed her with a delicious disturbance. It was no use trying to be dry-as-dust since the spring had got into her blood. The book must wait till she came back.

On Thursday the exodus from town had not yet begun. They left soon after breakfast. As Mary hurried from her Kensington flat to Paddington Station she met the church-goers with their prayer-books in their hands. It was Holy Thursday, to be sure—a day for solemn thought and thanksgiving. She hoped hers would not be less acceptable because it was made in the quietness of the fields.

It was an exquisite day of April—true Holy Week weather, with white clouds, like lambs straying in the blue pastures of the sky, shepherded by the south-west wind. The almond trees were in bloom. They had begun to drop their blossoms on the pavements, making a dust of roses in London streets. As they went down from Paddington the river-side orchards and gardens were starred with the blossom of pear and plum. Everywhere the birds were singing jocundly. The promise of spring a few days earlier had been nobly fulfilled.

The sun shone powerfully as they left the country station and went down a road set with bare hedges on either side. A week ago there had been frost. Now there was a grateful odour from the millions and millions of little spear-heads of grass that were pushing above the ground. On the banks by the side of the road there were primroses and violets, while there was yet a drift of last week's snow in the sheltered copses.

They found an inn by the side of the road. To the back of it lay a belt of woods. In front was a great stretch of cornfield and pasturage. In the distance a church-spire and yet other woods.

There was no village in sight. The village was, as a matter of fact, lying about its green and velvety common just a little way down the road. The place was full of the singing of the birds, and of another sound as sweet, the rushing of waters. A little river ran down from the higher country and passed through the inn-garden, turning a water-wheel as it went. The picture on the old sign was of a water-wheel. The inn was called the Water-Wheel.

"What a name to think upon!" said Mary, with a sigh, "in a torrid London August! it sounds full of refreshment."

"Its patrons would no doubt prefer the Beer-Keg," said Mrs. Morres, and was reproached for being cynical on such a day.

While they waited for a meal they explored the delightful inn-garden. It was not Sir Robin's first visit, and he was able to point out to them the lions of the place. There was the landlord's aviary of canary-birds, so hardy that they lived in the open air all the year round. There were the ferrets in a cage. Not far off, in a proximity which must have profoundly interested the ferrets, there was an enclosure of white rabbits. There was a wild duck which had been picked up injured in the leg one cold winter, and had become tame and followed them about now from place to place. There were a peacock and a peahen, a sty full of tiny, squeaking black piglets, hives of bees, all manner of pleasant country things. A lordly St. Bernard, with deep eyes of affection, followed Sir Robin as a well-remembered friend.

"Out in the woods," Sir Robin said, "there is a pond which later will be covered with water-lilies. The nightingales will have begun now. The wood is a grove of them. The landlord owned up handsomely when I came here first that 'they dratted things kept one awake at night.' I was only sorry they did not keep me. But after the first I slept too soundly."

"What did you find to do?" Mrs. Morres asked.

"Fish. There are plenty of trout in the upper reaches of the river."

They found their lunch of cold roast beef and salad, rhubarb tart and cream, delicious. The landlord had some good old claret in his cellar and produced it as though Sir Robin were an honoured guest. They sat to the meal by an open window. There were wallflowers under the window. In a bowl on the table were hyacinths and sweet-smelling narcissi.

After the meal Mrs. Morres was tired. "Let me rest," she said, "till tea-time. What did you say was the train? Five-thirty? Will you order tea for half-past four? It is half-past two now. Go and explore the woods. I believe I shall go asleep if I'm allowed. The buzzing of the bees out there is a drowsy sound."

Mary voted for walking up-stream, and confessed to a passion for tracking rivers to their sources. They stepped out briskly. She was wearing a long cloak of grey-blue cloth, which became her. Presently she took it off and carried it on her arm. Her frock beneath repeated the colour of the cloak. It had a soft fichu about the neck of yellowed muslin, with a pattern of little roses. He looked at her with admiration. He knew as little about clothes as most men, and, like most men, he loved blue. She did well to wear blue on such a day. The grey of her eyes took on the blue of her garments, a blue slightly silvered, like the blue of the April sky.

As the ground ascended, the stream brawled and leaped over little boulders green with the water-stain and lichens. There were quiet pools beside the boulders. As they stood by one they saw the fin of a trout in the obscurity.

They met no one. Presently they were higher than the woods and out on a green hillside. When they first appeared the place was alive with rabbits, who hurried to their burrows with a flash of white scuts.

"If we sit down on the hillside we can see the valley," Sir Robin said. "We can look down into the valley at our leisure. It is filled with a golden haze. This good sun is drawing out the winter damps. You shall have my coat to sit on. Wasn't I far-seeing to bring it?"

He spread the coat, which he had been carrying on his arm, for Mary, and she sat down on the very edge of the incline. The St. Bernard laid his silver and russet head on her skirt. They had lost sight of the river now. It had retired into the woods. When they sat down Sir Robin consulted his watch, and found that they might stay for nearly an hour. There was a bruised sweetness in the atmosphere about them, which they discovered presently to be wild thyme. They were sitting on a bed of it. He thought of it afterwards as one of the sweetnesses that must be always associated with Mary Gray, like the smell of violets. The full golden sun poured on them, warming them to the heart. The bees buzzed about the wild thyme and the golden heads of gorse. Little blue moths fluttered on the hillside. The rabbits, lower down the hill, came out of their burrows again and gambolled in the sunshine.

"How sweet it all is!" Mary said impulsively. "I shall always remember this day."

"And I."

He plucked idly at the wild thyme and the little golden vetches among the coarse grass of the hillside. A fold of the blue dress lay beside him. He touched it inadvertently, and the colour came to his cheek: unobserved, because he had his hat pulled down over his eyes, and Mary was sketching for him in detail the plan of her book. It interested him because it was hers. Her voice sounded like poetry. He had not wanted poetry. Blue-books and statistics had satisfied him very well, hitherto. But, to be sure, he had read poetry in his Oxford days. Lines and tags of it came into his mind dreamily as he listened to her voice. He did not touch that fold of her gown again. If he was sure—but he was not quite sure. And there was Nelly. He supposed Nelly cared for him if she was willing to marry him. If Nelly cared—why, then, he had no right to think of other possibilities.

Something had gone out of the glory and enchantment of the day as they went back down the hillside. Those lambs of clouds had suddenly banked themselves up into grey fleeces which covered the sun. The wind blew a little cold.

"It is the capriciousness of April," said Mary, unconscious of any change in the mental atmosphere.

He stopped on the downhill path, took her cloak from her arm, and with kind carefulness laid it about her shoulders. As he arranged it he touched one of the soft curls that lay on her white neck, and again a thrill passed through him. He began to wish that he had not planned this country expedition, after all. He ought really to have started this morning for the Continent. Going on Saturday, he would have very little time to stay.

On the homeward way Mrs. Morres reproached him with his dulness. What had come to him?

He hesitated, glancing at Mary in her corner. Mary had enjoyed her day thoroughly, and was wearing an air of great content. She was carrying a bunch of the wild thyme. She had taken off her hat and her cloudy hair seemed blown about her head like an aureole. She had a delicate, wild, elusive air. He withdrew his glance abruptly.

"It is a guilty conscience," he said. "I ought not to come back and dine with you to-night. I ought to put you into a cab and myself into another, go home for my bag and take the night-express to Paris. The House only rises for ten days and I have to be in my place on the opening night."

Mary looked up at him with a friendly air of being disappointed. She was engaged in putting the wild thyme into a bunch, stalk by stalk. Mrs. Morres began to protest—

"Well, of all the deceitful persons! After luring me to spend a Good Friday in town. To be sure, I shall have Mary. Will you come to the Good Friday service at St. Hugh's with me, Mary?"

"I should love to come."

"Very well, then. Have your bag packed and come back with me to sleep. We shall get off the earlier on Saturday morning. So we shan't miss you at all, Sir Robin."

He looked at her with great contrition.

"My mother—" he began.

"To be sure, your mother has first claim. To say nothing of another."

He coloured. Mary was looking at him with kind interest. Mrs. Morres sent him a quick glance—then looked away again.

"To be sure, you must go, Sir Robin," she said, in a serious voice. "I was only jesting. Ah! here we are! So it is good-bye."

"Au revoir," he corrected.

"Well, au revoir. I hope you'll have a very happy time at Lugano. But you are sure to."

A moment later they had gone off in their cab, and he was feeling the blank of their absence.