"Naturally if a man saves one's life one feels grateful. Perhaps my gratitude has invested him with a fictitious charm." She spoke with a little mocking air, twisting the sprig of lemon-plant in her long white fingers, and looking down meditatively at the carpet. "He will follow up his advantage," remarked Mrs. Tell, knitting steadily. "No man ever had a more favourable introduction. I wonder if he knew whose carriage it was when he stopped the horses? It was very well done. Of course, a man who has travelled for years, and gone into all sorts of risky places, is always ready for an emergency. He will call soon." "He will call soon," echoed the younger widow, still with the little touch of mockery in her tone, "and I shall ask him to dinner. And then, Olivia, you will sit there in your pet chair and watch us both over your knitting-pins. When men come here, you always remind me of Madame Defarge and the dreadful knitting-women of the French Revolution. You have knitted all my admirers into that coverlet you are making. It's a sort of secret record, I do believe." She rose, with a slight laugh, suppressed a yawn in saying good-night, and went out of the room with a soft rustle of trailing draperies, leaving Mrs. Tell sitting in the "pet-chair." CHAPTER XII _HIS FIRST VISIT_ "The roses bloom while the lady waits, The lark sings high in the blue above; But who will open the golden gates, And let her in to the realms of love?" Arnold Wayne's first call upon Elsie was always a very distinct memory to him afterwards. People were beginning to go out of town, and those who remained were haunted by the thought of breezy uplands, or of a blue summer sea breaking lazily on the golden sands. As Arnold walked along All Saints' Street, about five in the afternoon, the chime of a bell ringing for evensong reminded him of his old home at Rushbrook and the grey church close to his gates. So it came to pass that he went into Elsie's presence haunted by memories of his boyhood, and there was nothing in her presence to dispel such memories; something about her seemed to blend with them and harmonise with early associations. She had been sitting by the open window with a book upon her lap, and she rose to meet him, still holding the volume in her hand. She was dressed in a pale-grey gown, and wore a large bunch of heliotrope in the folds of a kerchief of soft muslin knotted at her breast. The quiet little room was flooded with sunshine; the bell kept up its chime; some white pigeons went flying past the window. "You have made a home here," he said involuntarily; and then he thought of those wise words of Ruskin's: "Wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head, the glow-worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot; but home is yet wherever she is." "Yes," she answered quietly, "it is a safe nook, where I can be at peace."