"Mr. and Mrs. John Yale have not yet established themselves at the Hall. They live at Henley, and their house is the summer resort of all kinds of people, among whom the Archdeacon is a very butterfly. An idea prevails--though a few of us are in the secret--that Mrs. Jack comes, in common with so many pretty women, of an old Irish family; and the other day I overheard an amusing scrap of conversation at her table. 'Mrs. Yale,' some one said, 'do you know that you remind me, I if may say it without offence, of Miss Kittie Latouche, the actress?'" "Indeed?" the lady replied with a charming blush. "But do you know that you are on dangerous ground? My husband was in love with that lady before he knew me. And I believe that he regrets her now." "Tit for tat!" cried Jack. "Let us all tell tales. If my wife was not in love with one Mr. Charles Williams a month--only a month--before she married me, I will eat her." "Oh, Jack!" the lady exclaimed, covered with confusion. But this story would not be believed in Studbury, where Mrs. John passes for being a little shy, a little timid, and not a little prudish. BAB BAB CHAPTER I HER STORY "Clare," I said, "I wish that we had brought some better clothes, if it were only one frock. You look the oddest figure." And she did. She was lying head to head with me on the thick moss which clothed one part of the river bank above Breistolen near the Sogne Fiord. We were staying at Breistolen, but there was no moss there, nor in all the Sogne district, I often thought, so deep and soft, and of so dazzling an orange and white and crimson as that particular patch. It lay quite high upon the hills, and there were gigantic grey boulders peeping through the moss here and there, very fit to break your legs if you were careless. Little more than a mile above us was the watershed, where our river, putting away with reluctance a first thought of going down the farther slope towards Bysberg, parted from its twin brother--who was thither bound with scores upon scores of puny green-backed fishlets--and instead, came down our side gliding and swishing and swirling faster and faster, and deeper and wider, and full, too, of red-speckled yellow trout all half-a-pound apiece, and very good to eat. But they were not so sweet or toothsome to our girlish tastes as the tawny-orange cloud-berries which Clare and I were eating as we lay. So busy was she with the luscious pile we had gathered that I had to wait for an answer. And then, "Speak for yourself," she said. "I'm sure you look like a short-coated baby. He is somewhere up the river, too." Munch, munch, munch! "Who is, you greedy little chit?" "Oh, you know," she answered. "Don't you wish you had your grey plush here, Bab?"