"Mrs. David Loring is a widow," murmured the companion darkly; "a young American widow; and they are said to be so dangerous!" Mrs. de Tracy drew herself up. "Do you insinuate that the Admiral's niece will lay herself out to attract Mr. Lavendar, a widow in the house of a widow! You go rather too far, Miss Smeardon, though you are speaking of an American. Besides, allusions of this character are extremely distasteful to me. I have been told that the minds of unmarried women are always running upon love affairs, but I should hardly have thought it of you." "I'm sure I never imagined any about myself!" murmured Miss Smeardon with the pitiable writhe of the trodden-on worm. "I should suppose not," rejoined Mrs. de Tracy gravely, and the companion took up her pen obediently to write to Maria Spalding. "Shall I send your love to the Admiral's niece?" she humbly enquired, "or--or something of the kind?" There was irony in the last phrase, but it was quite unconscious. "Not my love," replied Mrs. de Tracy, "some suitable message. Make no mistake about the dates, remember." Thus a letter containing dates, and though not love, the substitute described by Miss Smeardon as "something of the kind" for an unwanted niece from an unknown aunt, left Stoke Revel by the afternoon post and reached Robinette Loring at breakfast next morning. III YOUNG MRS. LORING Young Mrs. Loring thought she had never taken so long a drive as that from the Weston railway station to Stoke Revel. The way stretched through narrow winding roads, always up hill, always between high Devonshire hedges. The rain-soaked lanes were slippery and she was unpleasantly conscious of the size and weight of the American wardrobe trunk that reared its mighty frame in front of her almost to the blotting-out of the driver, who steadied it with one hand as he plied the whip with the other. It struck her humorously that the trunk was larger than most of the cottages they were passing. It was a late spring that year in England,--Robinette was a new-comer and did not know that England runs to late and wet springs, believing that they make more conversation than early, fine ones,--and the trees were just bursting into leaf. The sun had not shone for three days and the landscape, for all its beautiful greenness, looked gloomy to an eye accustomed to a good deal of crude sunshine. As the horse mounted higher and higher Robinette glanced out of the windows at the dripping boughs and her face lost something of its sparkle of anticipation. She had little to expect in the way of a warm welcome, she knew that; or at least her mind knew it, but Robinette's heart always expected surprises, although she had lived two and twenty summers and was a widow at that.