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sigh like that on a day like this. God’s good sunshine is made to laugh in.”

Grace turned listlessly.

“I can’t help it, Miss Whipple. I try not to, but———”

She walked to the dressing-table, leaving the sentence unfinished. She surveyed her appearance in the mirror, thrusting a wisp of hair beneath her hat-brim with unsteady fingers.

Miss Whipple’s shrewd, darting, black eyes narrowed, and she regarded the back of Grace with her head held upon one side. She mumbled her thin lips between her toothless jaws for a few moments, then nodded her head slowly.

“You’re lonely!” she snapped.

Grace started and flushed, but made no denial.

“Mm—yes, I knew it. I knew it,” declared Miss Whipple, smiling at her own perspicacity. “The very moment I first set eyes on you, down there in the dining-room, I said to myself, ‘That young woman is lonely.’ And that’s the reason, my dear, why I made myself known to you. I know what loneliness is. I’ve had over fifty years of it.”

She rose to her feet with an audible effort and crossed the room to stand beside Grace. Her thin arm went round the younger woman’s shoulders, and the two gazed at each other’s reflection in the mirror.

“Yes, I am lonely,” admitted Grace slowly.

Her head drooped and she made a pretence of setting the dressing-table in order.

“But I have Joan,” she added, lifting her head again, and attempting to smile, “so perhaps I am not really as lonely as I feel. Perhaps the weather is affecting me. The days are very hot———”

“Of course the weather is affecting you,” declared Miss Whipple with emphasis. “You’re in love; and no person in love can enjoy such weather as this unless the other party is present. You’re wondering what he’s doing on this beautiful day. You imagine