"Yes. Lady Ellington had my head in Chancery for ten minutes just now. She delivered a series of quick-firing questions. I know why, too; it was to prevent my going on the river. She was perfectly successful--I should think she always was successful; she mowed me down. Now will you tell me the truth or not?" "No, dear Evelyn," said Mrs. Home rather hastily, guessing what was coming. "Then you are a very wicked woman; but as I now know you are going to tell an untruth, it will do just as well for my purpose. Now, is Philip engaged to Miss Ellington?" "No, dear; indeed he is not," said Mrs. Home. "Oh, why not lie better than that?" said Evelyn. Mrs. Home clasped her white, delicate little hands together. "Ah, but it is true," she said. "It really is literally true, as far as I know." Evelyn shook his head at her. "But they have been gone half an hour," he said. "You mean--I tell you, you mean that they may be now, for all you know." Mrs. Home turned her pretty, china-blue eyes on to him, with a sort of diminutive air of dignity. "Of course you are at liberty to put any construction you please on anything I say," she remarked. "I am," said he, "and I put that. Now, are you pleased at it?" "She is charming," said Mrs. Home, hopelessly off her guard. "That is all I wanted to know," said Evelyn. "But what a tangled web you weave, without deceiving me in the least, you old darling." Tom Merivale had not joined Evelyn, but strolled along the upper walk through herbaceous borders. He had not stayed away from his home now for the past year, and delighted though he was to see these two old friends of his again, he confessed to himself that he found the call on sociability which a visit tacitly implied rather trying. More than that, he found even the presence of other people in the house with whom he was not on terms of intimacy a thing a little upsetting, for his year of solitude had given some justification to his nickname. For solitude is a habit of extraordinary fascination, and very quick to grow on anyone who has sufficient interest in things not to be bored by the absence of people. And with Tom Merivale, Nature, the unfolding of flowers, the lighting of the stars in the sky, the white splendour of the moon, the hiss of the rain on to cowering shrubs and thirsty grass was much more than an interest; it was a passion which absorbed and devoured him. For Nature, to the true devotee, is a mistress far more exacting and far more infinite in her variety and rewards than was ever human mistress to her adorer. Tom Merivale, at any rate, was faithful and wholly constant, and to him now, after a year spent in solitude in which no man had ever felt less alone, no human tie or affection weighed at all compared to the patient devotion with which he worshipped this ever young mistress of his. To some, indeed, as to Mrs. Home, this cutting of himself off from all other human ties might seem to verge on insanity; to others, as