"You are as foolish as I am. I can't help fancying sometimes that flowers are alive and can feel the sun and the glory of the blue sky. To be always looking up at the sky, dumb, lifeless, not knowing! One would hardly care for flowers if one could realize that they have neither sense nor feeling. Yet I suppose one does realize that cruel fact sometimes. I know when I have been looking at the roses, and delighting in their beauty, Caro meets me as I go back to the house, and as he leaps and frisks about me, the difference between him and the flowers strikes me very keenly. They so beautiful and so far off, he so near and dear--the precious living thing!" "Ah, that is the crown of things, Miss Vincent--life! Dead loveliness is nothing in comparison!" "No," said Suzette. "And what a blessing that life is beautiful in itself. One can love ugly people; one may adore an ugly dog; but who ever cared for an ugly chair, or could become attached to an ugly house?" "Not knowingly; but I have known people fondly attached to the most hideously furnished rooms. And oh, how humiliating it is for middle-aged people like my mother to be obliged to admit that the things we think hideous were accounted beautiful when they were young!" This easy, trivial talk was the growth of more than one luncheon, and a good many tea-drinkings, in the music-room or in the gardens of Discombe. Mrs. Wornock had opened her heart and her house to Suzette as she had never before done to any young lady in the neighbourhood, and Suzette warmly reciprocated the kindness of the recluse. She ran in at the Manor House almost as unceremoniously as she ran in at the Grove. It was understood by the servants that their mistress was always at home to Miss Vincent. And as Allan had previously been made free of the Manor House, it was only natural that he and Suzette should meet very often under Mrs. Wornock's mild chaperonage. Mrs. Mornington knew of these meetings, and, indeed, often dropped in while the young people were there, coming to take Suzette home in her pony-carriage, or to walk with her through the lanes. She showed no sign of disapproval; yet, as a woman of the world, it may have occurred to her that, since Mrs. Wornock was so fond of Suzette, it might be wise for Suzette to refrain from attaching herself to Allan Carew, while a superior _parti_ remained in the background in the person of Mrs. Wornock's only son. Happily for Allan, Mrs. Mornington, although essentially mundane, was not a schemer. She had made up her mind that Allan was a good deal better than the average young man, and that Beechhurst was quite good enough for her niece, whose present means and expectations were of a very modest order. There had been no mock humility in Mrs. Mornington's statement of facts when she told Allan that her brother's income, from all sources, was just big enough to enable him to live respectably at Marsh House. * * * * *