When Anna appeared she was carrying a little table, and the children with her had dishes of fruit. Dessert was arranged on the grass-plot in the centre of Madam's garden--peaches and greengages, sponge-cakes that Anna had whisked, and syllabub, all on white trellis-china. The gay flower-borders glowed beyond; there was a murmur of bees in the trees overhead; in the distance the opalescent plain lay in alternate shade and shine under the sailing cloud-shadows. Antoinette, Emmeline, Joan, and Jack, in their holland smocks and Roman scarves, frolicked from meadow to gill. Mr. Severn and Tremenheere sauntered out of the house--Mr. Severn with a decanter of claret which he intended the Canon to finish; Tremenheere himself more conscious of the charm of the place than of its conventional accessories, and bent on a walk over the moor when the shadows were lengthening and the evening breeze should silence the chirp of the grasshoppers and rustle through the ling. The ladies were left in the parlour. Mrs. Severn had floated away from the dinner-table in her sweeping black draperies with a face so white that Borlase was still obliged to consider her an orthodox patient. Mrs. Hennifer insisted on ensconcing her on the settee with her feet up. The parlour, with its faded rose-wreathed chintzes flouncing the chairs, its gently-swaying net curtains and oak-panelled walls, was cool and quiet. Mrs. Hennifer took a chair near the window. She felt like napping. It was pleasantly suggestive to think that a nap would certainly refresh Mrs. Severn. She looked through a manuscript book of songs for a guitar accompaniment, and noticed that Clothilde soon closed her eyes and allowed her head to fall back upon the cushions. She then at once closed hers too, with a pleasant relaxing of her angular figure into something approaching negligent comfort. She had scarcely done so before Mrs. Severn spoke. 'Mary!' 'Yes.' Mrs. Hennifer was upright again in a moment, more angry than embarrassed. She was convinced that Mrs. Severn had waited to betray her into a wish for a doze, for the sake of thwarting it immediately. 'Did you really think I meant to go to sleep, Mary?' 'Certainly. You are tired and it is so quiet here. You don't seem to have got up your strength well. You look no better than when I saw you last--in July, was it not?' 'No, later than that. The day you came over to tell me about Miss Marlowe, you know. I confess I don't think I have ever been well since. You must have something more to tell me now, have you not?' 'What about?' said Mrs. Hennifer, fixing her eyes sharply upon her. Mrs. Severn avoided them; her gaze idly followed the play of her own fingers through the fringe of the coverlet thrown over her. 'Well, you know--about Miss Marlowe.' Mrs. Hennifer scrutinised her face in silence for some time, but its absence of colour was equalled by that of expression.