Yet it is not always these delicate blossoms which fade the first; the tough-stemmed poppy will sometimes be mown down by Death’s inexorable sickle, while the opal-hued petals of the dog-rose still breast the storm. There was a strength of endurance beneath this fragile exterior which Lucius would have been slow to believe in. The girl glanced at the stranger with much surprise, but without the slightest embarrassment. Rarely did a stranger sit beside that hearth. But there had been such intruders from time to time, traders or clients of the old man’s. She had no curiosity upon the subject. ‘Your dinner is quite ready, grandfather,’ she said; ‘you had better eat it before it grows cold.’ She lifted the covers from the two dainty little dishes—a morsel of steak cooked in some foreign fashion—a handful of sliced potato fried in oil. Lucius rose to depart. ‘I won’t intrude upon you any longer, Mr. Sivewright,’ he said; ‘but if you will allow me to call upon you some day and look at your wonderful collection, I shall be very glad.’ ‘Stay where you are,’ answered the other in his authoritative way; ‘you’ve dined, I’ve no doubt.’ A convenient way of settling _that_ question. ‘Lucille, my granddaughter, can give you a cup of tea.’ Lucille smiled, with a little gesture of assent strikingly foreign, Lucius thought. An English girl would hardly have been so gracious to a nameless stranger. ‘I told you, when we first met in that abominable fog, that I liked your voice,’ said Mr. Sivewright. ‘I’ll go farther now, and say I like your face. I forgive you your profession, as I said before. Stay, and see my collection to-night.’ ‘That is as much as to say, “See all you want to see to-night, and don’t plague me with any future visits,”’ thought Lucius, who found that meagrely-furnished room, that scanty fire, more attractive since the appearance of Lucille. He accepted the invitation, however; drew his chair to the tea-table, and drank two cups of tea and ate two or three small slices of bread-and-butter with a sublime disregard of the fact that he had not broken his fast since eight o’clock in the morning. He had acquired a passion for mild decoctions of congou in those days of privation far away beyond the Saskatchewan; and this particular tea seemed to have a subtle aroma which made it better than any he had ever brewed for himself beside his solitary hearth. ‘I became a tea-drinker four years ago, in the Far West,’ he said, as an excuse for his second cup. ‘Do you mean in America?’ the girl asked eagerly. ‘Yes. Have you ever been over yonder?’ ‘Never; only I am always interested in hearing of America.’ ‘You had much better be interested in hearing of the moon,’ said Mr. Sivewright, with an angry look; ‘you are just as likely to discover anything there that concerns you.’