Mrs. Pope's eye was relentless; nothing seemed hidden from it; nothing indeed was hidden from it; Mr. Magnet's back was diagrammatic. Marjorie was a little flushed and bright-eyed, and professed herself eager, with an unnatural enthusiasm, to play golf-croquet. It was eloquently significant that Mr. Magnet did not share her eagerness, declined to play, and yet when she had started with the Rev. Jopling Baynes as partner, stood regarding the game with a sort of tender melancholy from the shade of the big chestnut-tree. Mrs. Pope joined him unobtrusively. "You're not playing, Mr. Magnet," she remarked. "I'm a looker-on, this time," he said with a sigh. "Marjorie's winning, I think," said Mrs. Pope. He made no answer for some seconds. "She looks so charming in that blue dress," he remarked at last, and sighed from the lowest deeps. "That bird's-egg blue suits her," said Mrs. Pope, ignoring the sigh. "She's clever in her girlish way, she chooses all her own dresses,--colours, material, everything." (And also, though Mrs. Pope had not remarked it, she concealed her bills.) There came a still longer interval, which Mrs. Pope ended with the slightest of shivers. She perceived Mr. Magnet was heavy for sympathy and ripe to confide. "I think," she said, "it's a little cool here. Shall we walk to the Water Garden, and see if there are any white lilies?" "There are," said Mr. Magnet sorrowfully, "and they are very beautiful--_quite_ beautiful." He turned to the path along which he had so recently led Marjorie. He glanced back as they went along between Lady Petchworth's herbaceous border and the poppy beds. "She's so full of life," he said, with a sigh in his voice. Mrs. Pope knew she must keep silent. "I asked her to marry me this afternoon," Mr. Magnet blurted out. "I couldn't help it." Mrs. Pope made her silence very impressive. "I know I ought not to have done so without consulting you"--he went on lamely; "I'm very much in love with her. It's----It's done no harm." Mrs. Pope's voice was soft and low. "I had no idea, Mr. Magnet.... You know she is very young. Twenty. A mother----" "I know," said Magnet. "I can quite understand. But I've done no harm. She refused me. I shall go away to-morrow. Go right away for ever.... I'm sorry." Another long silence. "To me, of course, she's just a child," Mrs. Pope said at last. "She _is_ only a child, Mr. Magnet. She could have had no idea that anything of the sort was in your mind----" Her words floated away into the stillness. For a time they said no more. The lilies came into sight, dreaming under a rich green shade on a limpid pool of brown water, water that slept and brimmed over as it were, unconsciously into a cool splash and ripple of escape. "How beautiful!" cried Mrs. Pope, for a moment genuine. "I spoke to her here," said Mr. Magnet. The fountains of his confidence were unloosed.