Round her slender neck was a collarette of soft, filmy white lace, and in it was a Provence rose, which Lord Cadbury had not been slow to detect as one from his own bouquet, and gathered some hope therefrom, as Bevil Goring did from her wearing his rosebud. As she stood in the deep bay of one of the old windows, with the full flood of the ruddy afternoon sun streaming upon her, she made a charming picture, and there Goring joined her, while the rest were all engaged in general conversation. He was already feeling that to be near her was happiness, and that to see her, even across a table, was a thousand degrees better than not seeing her at all. And she--brief though their acquaintance was--had become conscious of a quicker beating of her pulse, an undefinable sense of pleasure pervading her whole form, a mantling of colour in her cheek when he approached or spoke to her. Little had as yet passed between them; but the tell-tale eyes had told much. 'What a wonderful vista of old beech-trees!' said Goring, referring to the view from the windows. 'And the distant village spire closes it so prettily,' she replied; 'but you cannot see it properly from this point--but from that little terrace.' 'May we step out?' 'Oh, yes.' She tried to open the window, a French one, which opened to the floor within and to a couple of stone steps without. 'Allow me,' murmured Goring, and as he drew back the latch his fingers closed for a moment over hers. They were only friends--he was only a visitor--why should she not show him the view, or anything else that interested him? She took a Shetland shawl from a chair close by, threw it over her head, and, gathering the soft folds under her pretty chin in a hand that was white as a rosebud, passed out with him upon the little terrace hat overlooked her garden. 'And so that is Chilcote Church?' 'Yes, Captain Goring--an old edifice--old, they say, as the time of Edward the Elder. It is covered with ivy, and is a capital subject to sketch.' 'And is this building here, with the eaves, your stable?' 'Oh, no--we have no stables; but it is the scene of my peculiar care,' replied Alison, laughing. 'Indeed!' 'My hen-house.' And, with all his growing admiration of her, the fashionable young officer almost laughed when his charming companion showed him her hen-houses--her beautiful Hamburgs, Dorkings, and their chutches of Cochin-China chickens. 'Do you like bees?' she asked. 'No--they sting, you know; but I don't object to the honey.' So she showed him her hives, as if Goring had never seen such things before; and so on by the duck-pond, and round the old-fashioned house, with its heavy eaves, dormer windows, and masses of ivy, and he could only think what a picturesque background it made to the central figure of his lovely companion, who, sooth to say, in the pleasure of his society, forgot all about her other guests; or, if she did think, she knew that Mrs. Trelawney could amuse them all.