"Well, you 've had a good sousing—had you a good walk?" asked the little brisk old woman, in her pleasant light old voice.

"Yes—to Blye, or nearly," said Anthony. "The rain only caught us towards the end. But what I stand in need of now is your sympathy and counsel."

She sat back in a deep easy chair, her pretty little hands folded in her lap, her pretty little feet, in dainty slippers, high-heeled and silver-buckled, resting on a footstool. It was a pretty as well as a kind and clever face that smiled enquiringly up at him, from under her soft abundance of brown hair.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing much. I 'm merely in love," he answered.

Miss Sandus sat forward.

"In love? That's delightful. Whom with? With me? Is this a declaration? Or a confidence?"

She fixed him with her humorous bright old eyes.

"It's both. Of course, I 'm in love with you. Everyone who knows you is that," he predicated. "But also," he added, on a key of profound melancholy, "if you will forgive my forcing the confidence upon you, also with her."

He glanced indicatively ceilingwards.

"H'm," Miss Sandus considered, looking into the fire, "also with her."

"Yes," said Anthony.

"H'm," repeated Miss Sandus. "You go a bit fast. How long have you known her?"

"All my life. I never lived until I knew her," he averred.

"It was inevitable that you should say that—men always say that," the lady generalised. "I heard it for the first time fifty-five years ago."

"Then, I expect, there must be some truth in it," was Anthony's deduction. "Anyhow, I have known her long enough. One does n't need time in these affairs. One recognises a perfect thing—one recognises one's affinity. One knows when one is hit. I 'm in love with her. Give me your sympathy and counsel."

"You have my sympathy. What counsel do you wish?"

"What shall I do?" asked Anthony. "Drown myself? Take to drink?"

"I should n't drown myself," said Miss Sandus. "Drowning is so wet and chilly; and I 'm told it's frightfully unbecoming, into the bargain. As for drink, I hear it's nothing like what it's cracked up to be."

"I daresay it is n't," admitted Anthony, with a sigh. "I suppose there's not the ghost of a chance for me?" he gloomed.

"H'm," said Miss Sandus.

"I suppose it would be madness on my part to speak to her?" he pursued.

"That would depend a good deal, I should think, on the nature of what you said," his counsellor suggested, smiling.

"If I said point-blank I loved her—?"

Miss Sandus looked hard at the fire, her brows drawn together, pondering. Her brows were drawn together, but the vis comica played about her lips.

"I think, if I were in your place, I should try it," she decided at last.

"Would you?" said Anthony, surprised, encouraged. But, in a second, despondency had closed round him again. "You see," he signified, "the situation is uncommonly delicate—one 's at a double and twisted disadvantage."

"How so?" Miss Sandus asked, looking up.

"She's established here for the summer. I, of all men, must n't be the one to make Craford impossible for her."

"I see," said Miss Sandus. "Yes, there's that to be thought of."

"There 's such a deuced lot of things to be thought of," said he, despairingly.

"Let's hear the deuced lot," said the lady, with business-like cheerfulness.

"Well, to begin with," he brought out painfully, "there 's the fact that she 's rich."

"Yes, she's rich," conceded Miss Sandus. "Does that diminish her attractions?"

"You know what I mean," groaned Anthony, with no heart for trifling.

"For the matter of that, are n't you rich yourself?" Miss Sandus retorted.

"Rich!" he cried. "I totter on the brink of destitution."

"Oh?" she murmured. "I 'd imagined you were by way of being rather an extensive land owner."

"So I am," said he. "And my rather extensive lands, what with shrinkages and mortgages, with wages, pensions, subscriptions, and general expenses,—I doubt if they yield a net income of fifteen hundred a year. And I 've not a stiver else in the world."

"Poor, poor young man," she laughingly commiserated him. "And yet I hardly think you 're poor enough to let the fact of her wealth weigh with you. If a man has enough for himself, it does n't matter how much more his wife may have, since he 'll not depend upon her for his support. I should n't lie awake o' nights, bothering about the money question."

Anthony got up, and stood at the end of the fireplace, with his elbow on the mantel.

"You 're awfully good," he said, looking down at the gracious little old figure in the easy chair.

"I 'm an old woman," said she. "All old women love a lover. You renew the romance of things for us. You transport us back, a century or so, to our hot youth, when George the Third was king, and we were lovers ourselves. Et in Arcadia ego—but I 've lost my Greek."

"You 'll never lose your Pierian," said Anthony, bowing.

He took her hand, bent over it, and touched it with his lips.

"If flattery can make friends, you 'll not lack 'em," said she, with a pretty, pleased old blush.

"But I 've not yet emptied my sack," said he, relapsing into gloom.
"There's a further and perhaps a greater difficulty."

"Let's hear the further difficulty," cheerily proposed Miss Sandus. Then, as he appeared to hesitate, "Has it anything to do with her former marriage?"

"You divine my thoughts," he replied, in an outburst. "Yet," he more lightly added, "you know, I don't in the least believe in her former marriage. She seems so—well, if not exactly girlish, so young, so immaculately fresh, it's impossible to believe in. None the less, of course, it 's an irrevocable fact, and it's a complication. I must n't intrude on sacred ground. If she still grieves . . ."

A gesture conveyed the rest.

"Look here," said Miss Sandus, abruptly. "I'm going to betray a trust. Think what you will of me, I 'm going to violate a confidence. She does n't grieve, she has never grieved. Your intuitions about her are right to the letter. She was never married, except in name—it was purely a marriage of convenience—the man was a complete nonentity. Don't ask me the whys and the wherefores. But make what you will of that which I 've been indiscreet enough to tell you."

"I think you are an angel out of Heaven," cried Anthony, with ardour. "If you could know the load you have lifted from my heart, the balm you have poured into it."

"If you have n't wealth," Miss Sandus went on, summing the issue up, "you have a good position and—a beau nom. You have more than one indeed, if all I hear be true. You 're both of the old religion, you 're both at the mating age. In every way it would be a highly suitable match. Wait for a good occasion—occasion's everything. Wait for—what does the poet say?—for the time and the place and the loved one all together, and tell her that you love her. And now—here comes the tea."

And with the tea came Susanna, in a wonderful rustling blue-grey confection of the material that is known, I believe, as voile; and immediately after Susanna, Adrian.