Mrs. Tropenell, sitting upright in a low chair, was looking up into the face of the man who stood before her, and they were both so absorbed in what they were saying that neither had heard the door open. Laura gazed with new eyes, a new curiosity, at Lord St. Amant. She had seen him often in this house, though sometimes at comparatively long intervals, ever since she was a child, and always he had had a fixed place, in her mind and imagination, as Mrs. Tropenell's one man-friend. To-day, seeing the two thus talking eagerly together she felt her interest oddly quickened. She was asking herself eagerly whether some such passage as that which had taken place between herself and Oliver Tropenell three months ago, and which had caused her so much pain, had ever occurred between those two in the days when Lady St. Amant, a fretful, selfish invalid whom every one disliked, was still alive. If yes, then Mrs. Tropenell had evidently known how to retain the friendship, the warm affections of a man who, younger, had been notoriously inconstant. In Laura's eyes these two had always been old when she thought of them at all. But to-day she realised, as in a flash, that the man and woman before her had also been young, and that not so very long ago. Even now, Lord St. Amant was a still vigorous and active-looking man. He was leaning over the back of a chair, looking eagerly into his old friend's face. Was it true, as some of the gossips said, that he had remained a widower for that same friend's sake? Laura gazed at him with an almost hungry curiosity. She was absurdly surprised that he looked to-day exactly as he had always looked in her eyes--a pleasant, agreeable-mannered, amusing man of the world, not at all her notion of the one-time lover of many women. Lord St. Amant's hair had now gone white, but, apart from that he looked just as he had been wont to look, when he came and went about Freshley Manor, when she, as a child, had stayed there with her mother. Some years later, she had become dimly aware--girls always know such things--that Mrs. Tropenell had had a fleeting notion of marrying her to Lord St. Amant. But Laura had also known that it was Mrs. Tropenell, not herself, who was the magnet which then drew him so often to Freshley Manor. They had once, however, had an intimate talk together. It had been on one of the very rare occasions when Mrs. Tropenell was ill, confined to bed, upstairs, and she, Laura Baynton, had been left alone to entertain her Aunt Letty's old friend. And their talk--she remembered it now--had been all of Oliver: of Oliver and his mother. Lord St. Amant had spoken with much heat of Oliver's having settled on the other side of the world, leaving Mrs. Tropenell lonely. Then he had smiled a curious little smile: "But that makes no difference. To a mother 'distance makes the heart grow fonder,' and also 'lends enchantment to the view.' An only son, Laura, is the most formidable of rivals."