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and it was to reassure himself as to their soundness that he smiled at her again as he again met her eyes. For a moment, above Mrs. Graham's genial head, they held his. Then Mrs. Graham unclasped her hand, and she moved away, going to the solitary seat from which they had detained her, where, contentedly it seemed, she bent her head to watch the children playing on the lawn.

Maverley was asking himself what was the matter with him. What had he felt in that mute moment of encounter? He would not answer the question. He and Constance chatted, speciously he knew, and neither spoke further of Madeline Tristram.

At the dinner-table, from his place beside Mrs. Parflew, the rector's wife, he could see Miss Tristram far down the table. It was the dull boy who sat beside her, and he seemed to talk easily enough to her, while she turned to him the unvarying assent of her smile. Maverley imagined, as he watched, that the youth must be very dull, very self-centered, to talk so easily. Mrs. Parflew noticed his wandering attention, and her eyes followed his. She dropped her voice a little to say, "That 's an odd girl, don't you think?"

It was not his own imagination, then, his own unrecognizable nerves—he saw that in Mrs. Parflew's intelligent countenance; but he was sorry that it was not, distinctly sorry that Madeline Tristram stirred even this cheerful and obvious lady to surmise. He took refuge in the subterfuge of the afternoon. "She is extraordinarily beautiful."

"Yes, isn't she?" said Mrs. Parflew, good-humoredly willing to accept the evasion. She added, however: "She never talks; it 's so odd."

"Never?" Maverley could not control the startled quality of his voice.

"Well, I have heard her speak. I mean that it 's quite noticeable—her not speaking. She is a nice, good girl," Mrs. Parflew went on; "she is always helping us. She will do anything—all manner of dull things other people shirk; but it 's always in her own odd way."

"In what way do you mean? This mystery interests me."

"Ah, that 's it, you see; she is a mystery. One can hardly describe it. She never wants to be near people. She wants to help them, apparently; but it must be indirectly—at a distance from them."

He did not like to question, but he had to allow himself, "Does n't she care for people?"

"Oh, I should say she did, perhaps," said Mrs. Parflew. "It 's rather the other way round."

He was left to ponder this saying while Mrs. Parflew turned her talk on her right-hand neighbor.

For the three weeks that followed Maverley, quite uncomfortably, watched Miss Tristram, so absorbed in conjecture that he sometimes wondered, pulling himself up short, whether she must not guess that she was being watched. And he wondered if other people were watching, too; but though the others apparently assented to her avoidance of them,—perhaps furthered it by their own avoidance of her,—he could catch no signs of a brooding intentness such as his own. It seemed by tacit consent accepted that she was not one of themselves. On neither side, perhaps, was there conscious withdrawal. She was among them, but it was as if they were embarked on a speeding ship, all pennons, music, light, and dancing, and she was a white albatross flying in loneliness beside it. From decks where lanterns swung against the darkness Maverley seemed to himself to lean and gaze and gaze at the bird that followed in the desolate void of black waves and sky.

Miss Tristram apparently spent her mornings in the drudgery of charities to which her aunt had referred, for in the mornings she did not appear. After lunch she went into the woods with a book. After tea she rode alone. Maverley saw her depart once or twice, and found a reassurance in the sight. She made him less uncomfortable than usual when he beheld her cantering down the avenue in the flickering lights of late afternoon. She and her horse, graceful, supple, and strong, looked as if joy were with them. Was she so joyless that he, the mere onlooker, could feel the change in her when she rode away on her horse—away from people who grew silent when she came among them? He told himself more and more vehemently that he was growing morbid, and that if his thoughts continued so to brood on Madeline Tristram, he must frankly tell Constance of his folly, and frankly ask her if