always fatiguing. If I am not in your way, I should like to stay here."
Mrs. Vandeleur professed her satisfaction by a polite little murmur, leaning forward in her chair to marshal the scattered tea-cups on the tray, while Sir Geoffrey watched her askance, rather timidly, with a keen appreciation of the subtle charm of her personality; her face, like a perfect cameo, or some rare pale flower, seeming to have gained rather in beauty by the deliberate passage from youth; winning, just as some pictures do, an added grace of refinement, a delicacy, which the slight modification of contours served only to intensify.
"I told you just now that I had been thinking," he said presently, when she had resumed her task of embroidering initials in the corner of a handkerchief: "would it surprise you if I said that I had been thinking of you?"
Mrs. Vandeleur raised her eyebrows slightly, her gaze still intent upon her patient needle.
"Perhaps it was natural that you should think of us," she hazarded.
"But I meant you," he continued; "you, the Margaret of the old days, before I went away. For I used to call you 'Margaret' then. We were great friends, you know."
"I have always thought of you as a friend," she said simply. "Yes, we were great friends before—before you went away."
"It doesn't seem so long ago to me," he declared, almost plaintively, struck by something in the tone of her voice. Mrs. Vandeleur smiled tolerantly, scrutinising her embroidery, with her head poised on one side, a little after the manner of a bird.
"And now that I have found you again," he added with intention, dropping his eyes till they rested on the river, rippling pastthe