Away she flew over the grass, with Adderley after her. Through tall buttercups and field daisies they raced each other like children,-- startling astonished bees from repasts in clover-cups--and shaking butterflies away from their amours on the starwort and celandines. The private gate leading into Abbot's Manor garden stood open,-- Cicely rushed in, and shut it against her pursuer who reached it almost at the same instant. "Too bad!" he cried laughingly--"You mustn't keep me out! I'm bound to come inside!" "Why?" demanded Cicely, breathless with her run, but looking all the better for the colour in her cheeks and the light in her eyes--"I don't see the line of argument at all. Your hair is simply dreadful! You look like Pan, heated in the pursuit of a coy nymph of Delphos. If you only wore skins and a pair of hoofs, the resemblance would be perfect!" "My dear Cicely!" said a dulcet voice at this moment,--"Where HAVE you been all the morning! How do you do, Mr. Adderley? Won't you come in?" Adderley took off his hat, as Maryllia came across to the gate from the umbrageous shadow of a knot of pine-trees, looking the embodiment of fresh daintiness, in a soft white gown trimmed with wonderfully knotted tufts of palest rose ribbon, and wearing an enchanting 'poke' straw hat with a careless knot of pink hyacinths tumbling against her lovely hair. She was a perfect picture 'after Romney,' and Adderley thought she knew it. But there he was wrong. Maryllia knew little and cared less about her personal appearance. "Where have you been?" she repeated, taking Cicely round the waist-- "You wild girl! Do you know it is lunch time? I had almost given you up. Spruce said you had gone into the village--but more than that she couldn't tell me." "I did go to the village,"--said Cicely--"and I went into the church, and played the organ, and helped the children sing a hymn. And I met the parson, Mr. Walden, and had a talk with him. Then I started home across the fields, and found this man"--and she indicated Adderley with a careless nod of her head--"asleep in a wood. I almost promised him some lunch--I didn't QUITE---" "My dear Miss Vancourt,"--protested Adderley--"Pray do not think of such a thing!--I would not intrude upon you in this unceremonious way for the world!" "Why not?" said Maryllia, smiling graciously--"It will be a pleasure if you will stay to luncheon with us. Cicely has carte blanche here you know--genius must have its way!" "Of course it must!"--agreed Cicely--"If genius wants to etand on its head, it must be allowed to make that exhibition of itself lest it should explode. If genius asks the lame, halt, blind and idiotic into the ancestral halls of Abbot's Manor, then the lame, halt, blind and idiotic are bound to come. If genius summons the god Pan to pipe a roundelay, pipings there shall be! Shall there not, Mr. Pan Adderley?"