"I hope that what happened last time I saw you won't make any difference, Lucy--I mean as to our being friends, and my coming to the Grange?" He had always called her Lucy--always, that is, since her parents had come home from India when she was twelve years old. Now it is difficult, or so at least thought Lucy Kemp, to cherish any thought of romance in connection with a man who has called you by your Christian name ever since you were a little girl! She hesitated. To her mind what had happened when they had last met ought to make a difference. She remembered how wretched his evident disappointment and unhappiness had made her at the time, and how kindly, since that time, had been her thoughts of him, how pained her father and mother had been. And now? Even after so short a time as three months, here he was, looking as cheerful and as good-tempered as ever! It was clear he had not cared as much as she had thought, and yet, according to her mother, he had wanted to speak to her nearly two years ago, and had been asked to bide his time. It was the knowledge of this constancy on his part which had made Lucy very tender to him in her thoughts. Laxton misunderstood her silence: "You need not be afraid, Lucy, that--that I will bother you again in the same way. But honestly, you don't know how I have missed you all, how awfully lonely I've felt sometimes." Lucy became aware that he was looking at her with a troubled, insistent face, and she suddenly remembered how much he used to be with them, making the Grange his home when she was still a very young girl, though he was more than welcome at another house in the neighbourhood. As for old Squire Laxton, Lucy knew only too well why he now always looked at her so disagreeably; the coming and going of this young soldier cousin to Laxgrove had been the old sporting bachelor's great pleasure, apart of course from hunting, and he had missed him sorely that summer. Why should not everything go on as it had done before, if Captain Laxton really wished it to do so? And so she said in a low tone, "Of course we have missed you too, all of us, very much." "Oh! well then, that's all right! I will come over to the Grange to-morrow--I suppose you would all be tired out this evening? I've been at Laxgrove nearly a week already, and I must be back at Canterbury on Monday, worse luck! I say, Lucy----"