"I shall make a point of wanting as many things as I possibly can. I love being waited on, and I've never been able to get enough of it. I shall keep you busy! Judith, to think that I was once going to desert Hilsey! Well, I suppose we shall be turned out some day." He sighed lightly and humorously over the distant prospect of ejection by Margaret, grown-up, married perhaps, and the _châtelaine_. "If you want to know your future, I happen to be able to tell you," said Judith. "Margaret arranged it while she was getting into bed." "Oh, let's hear this! It's important--most important!" he cried, sitting up. "If you don't want to go on living here, you're to have a house built for you up on the hill there. On the other side of the wood, I insisted; otherwise you'd spoil the view horribly! But Margaret didn't seem to mind about that." "Yes, I think I must be behind the wood--especially if I'm to have a modern artistic cottage." "There you're to live--when you're not in London, being praised by judges--and you're to come down the hill to tea every day of the week." "It doesn't seem a bad idea--only she might sometimes make it dinner!" "She'll make it dinner when she's bigger, I daresay. At present, for her, you see, dinner doesn't count." "Why does she think I mightn't want to go on living here? Is she contemplating developments in my life? Or in her own? And where are you going to live while I'm living on the top of the hill, out of sight behind the wood? Did Margaret settle your future too, Judith?" "I don't think it occurs to her that I've got one--except just to go on being here. We women--we ordinary women--get our futures settled for us. I think Bernadette settled mine the day she ran away and left poor Hilsey derelict." He looked up at her with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Should you put the settling of your fate quite as early as that, Judith?" She saw what he meant and shook her head at him in reproof, but her eyes were merry and happy. "Have you thought over that idea of Switzerland in the winter?" "It's the spring now. Why do you want to think of winter?" "The thought of winter makes the spring even pleasanter." She smiled as she rested her hand on his shoulder and looked down on his face. "Well, perhaps--if I can possibly persuade Godfrey to come with us." "If he won't? What are we to do if we can get nobody to go with us?" She broke into a low gentle laugh. "Well, I don't want to get rusty in my skating. And it's splendid over there." Her eyes met his for a moment in gleeful confession. "Still--the best day's skating I ever had in my life, Arthur, was the first day we skated here at Hilsey." PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM BRANDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH METHUEN'S POPULAR NOVELS Crown 8vo. =6s. each= AUTUMN, 1915