She shook her head. "Not at all, thank you. Good-bye. Perhaps one day I may send over for you to come and cheer up a very lonely old lady, but it's only a possibility, not a probability." She turned to give directions to her chauffeur, and then, as Anstice was busy putting the little fellow into his basket chair, she came over and stood beside him. "Will you give me a kiss?" she asked suddenly. Ruffie coloured. He was not particularly fond of kissing strangers; then he put his little arms round her neck and pressed his soft, rosy mouth against her cheek. "I like you," he said. "I like your eyes, they make me think of Dad's. You move them about like he does." The stranger murmured something to herself, and Anstice caught the words: "May I be preserved from being like him in any way." And then with a flash of intuition, Anstice guessed who she might be. But she said nothing. Farewells were said, and then Anstice and Ruffie turned homewards. "It is too late to go on farther to-day," Anstice said. "As it is, we shall be late for tea. What did you talk to that lady about, darling?" Ruffie told her as much of the conversation as he could remember. Anstice was very quiet on the way home. She wondered if it would have been best to ask for the stranger's name. "But then she might have refused to give it to me," she told herself; "she evidently did not wish us to recognize her. I am glad she has met her nephew. It may do good. I hope it will. I shall tell Justin about it when he comes home. If I write to him about it, he will ignore it, and we shall be no 'forrarder.'" BOOK III LOVERS CHAPTER I "I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT YOU" THE children's hour was over. Anstice sat outside on the terrace enjoying a rest. She heard their happy chatter in the rooms above her, as they were being got ready for bed. It was a lovely evening in late June. Roses were just beginning to riot in the rose-beds and over the walls of the old house. There was a sweet scent of jasmine and of stocks coming from the flower-beds by the hall door. She looked across the park, which was golden in the evening sun, to the still, dark-blue water of the lake, and to the purple Fells beyond it. Much as her soul was enjoying the peaceful beauty of the scene before her eyes, her thoughts were on a certain yacht in Norwegian fiords, and very much with the owner of it. She and Justin had exchanged a few friendly letters, but she had not heard for a fortnight now, and could not write till she had received his fresh address. He had been gone a month. She wondered if he were on his way to America, and a certain wistfulness gathered in her eyes as for the hundredth time she began to speculate upon her future. She was so engrossed with her thoughts, and so screened by a tall myrtle tree in a tub, that she neither heard nor saw an arrival at the house.