"Allan, poor Allan, how you have been running!" exclaimed Suzette. "I was vexed with myself for losing the whole of your organ lesson," said Allan, shaking hands with Mrs. Wornock, and gazing at the stranger as at a ghost. Yes, it was Geoffrey Wornock. Even his hurried reflections during that hurried walk had told Allan that it must be he, and none other. No one else would be admitted to the familiarity of the garden and summer-house. Mrs. Wornock had no casual visitors, no intimate friends, except Suzette and himself. "There has been no organ lesson this morning, Allan," Mrs. Wornock told him, her face radiant with happiness. "Suzette and I have been surprised out of all sober occupations and ideas. This son of mine took it into his head to come home nearly a fortnight before I expected him. He arrived as suddenly as if he had dropped from the skies. He did not even telegraph to be met at the station." "A telegram would have taken the bloom off the surprise, mother," said the man in grey, standing up tall and straight, but slenderly built. Allan felt himself a coarse gladiatorial sort of person beside this elegant and refined-looking young man. Nor was there anything effeminate about that graceful figure to which an envious critic could take exception. Soldiering had given that air of manliness which can co-exist with slenderness and grace. "Geoffrey, this is Allan, of whom you know so much." "They tell me that you and I are very much alike, Mr. Carew," said Geoffrey, with a pleasant laugh, "and my mother tells me that you and I are to take kindly to each other, and in fact she expects to see us by way of being adopted brothers. I don't quite know what that means--whether we are to ride each other's horses, and make free with each other's guns, or go halves in a yacht or a racehorse?" "I want you to like each other--to be real friends," said Mrs. Wornock, earnestly. "Then don't say another word about it, mother. Friendship under that kind of protecting influence rarely comes to any good; but I am quite prepared to like Mr. Carew on his own account, and I hope he may be able to like me on the same poor grounds." He had an airy way of dismissing the subject which set them all at their ease, and steered them away from the rocks and shoals of sentiment. Mrs. Wornock, who had been on the verge of weeping, smiled again, and led Geoffrey off to look at the gardens, and all the improvements which had been effected during his three years' absence, leaving the lovers to follow or not as they pleased. The lovers stayed in the summer-house, feeling that mother and son would like to be alone; and mother and son strolled on side by side, looking like brother and sister.