Meynell looked at the speaker in smiling astonishment. "What are you up for at this hour?" "Why shouldn't I be up? Look how lovely it is! I have a friend with me, and I want to introduce you." Miss Puttenham opened her garden gate and drew in the Rector. Behind her among the roses Meynell perceived another lady--a girl, with bright reddish hair. "Mary!" said Miss Puttenham. The girl approached. Meynell had an impression of mingled charm and reticence as she gave him her hand. The eyes were sweet and shy. But the unconscious dignity of bearing showed that the shyness was the shyness of strong character, rather than of mere youth and innocence. "This is my new friend, Mary Elsmere. You've heard they're at Forked Pond?" Alice Puttenham said, smiling, as she slipped her arm round the girl. "I captured her for the night, while Mrs. Elsmere went to town. I want you to know each other." "Elsmere's daughter!" thought Meynell, with a thrill, as he followed the two ladies through the open French window into the little dining-room, where the coffee was ready. And he could not take his eyes from the young face. CHAPTER III "I am in love with the house--I adore the Chase--I like heretics--and I don't think I'm ever going home again!" Mrs. Flaxman as she spoke handed a cup of tea to a tall gentleman, Louis Manvers by name, the possessor of a long, tanned countenance; of thin iron-gray hair, descending toward the shoulders; of a drooping moustache, and eyes that mostly studied the carpet or the knees of their owner. A shy, laconic person at first sight, with the manner of one to whom conversation, of the drawing-room kind, was little more than a series of doubtful experiments, that seldom or never came off. Mrs. Flaxman, on the other hand, was a pretty woman of forty, still young and slender, in spite of two boys at Eton, one of them seventeen, and in the Eleven; and her talk was as rash and rapid as that of her companion was the reverse. Which perhaps might be one of the reasons why they were excellent friends, and always happy in each other's society. Mr. Manvers overlooked a certain challenge that Mrs. Flaxman had thrown out, took the tea provided, and merely inquired how long the rebuilding of the Flaxmans' own house would take. For it appeared that they were only tenants of Maudeley House--furnished--for a year. Mrs. Flaxman replied that only the British workman knew. But she looked upon herself as homeless for two years, and found the prospect as pleasant as her husband found it annoying.