go?" all in herself that she wished to be reckoned by, all that was truly herself, said "God-speed" to him. The gardeners at Pangbourne Court had been startled into dreadful activity that day. "The master," it was known, would be down for this Sunday, but "the master" by himself was a much more formidable affair than he with a party. As Philip had conjectured at Whitsuntide, there would come a break in the happy life of the garden, and it was quite indubitably here now. The hot and early summer which had produced so glorious an array of blossom in that June week now exacted payment for that; roses which should have flowered into August had exhausted themselves, the blooms of summer were really over, while the autumn plants were still immature. All this was really not the fault of the gardeners, but of the weather; but, as has been said, they were stirred into immense activity by the prospect of Philip's arrival, since if the beds presented a fair show, he would be more likely to be lenient to other deficiencies. But Mrs. Home, as she went up and down the paths waiting for his arrival, saw but too clearly that things were not quite as they should be. A dryness, an arrest of growth, seemed to have laid hands on the beds; it was as if some catastrophe had stricken the vegetable kingdoms that withered and blighted them. The grass of the lawn, too, lacked the vividness of the velvet that so delighted Philip's London-wearied eye--there were patches of brown and withered green everywhere, instead of the "excellent emerald." Yet, perhaps, surely almost, he would not vex himself with that. Three days only intervened between now and the twenty-eighth; he would have no fault to find with anything in the sunlight of life which so streamed on him. She was passing between two old hedges of yew, compact and thick of growth as a brick wall, and impervious to the vision. Her own path lay over the grass, but on either far side of these hedges was a gravel walk, and half-way up this she heard a footstep sounding crisply. For one moment she thought it was Philip's, and nearly called to him, the next she smiled at herself for having thought so, for it altogether lacked the brisk decision with which he walked, and she made sure it was one of the gardeners. It went parallel with her, however, in the same direction, and when she got to the end of her own yew-girt avenue, she met the owner of the footstep in the little sunk Alpine garden, which was Philip's especial delight. It was he. She had not recognised the footstep, and though when they met, her eyes told her that this certainly was her son, it was someone so different from him whom she knew that she scarcely recognised him.