There was a moment of silence; for Mr. Grey had condensed the whole business into a few words, and there was really no more to say. Annette had written him to save all his flowers for her wedding, and this was his answer. "Are you going away?" she asked, rather needlessly. "I'm going to meet the next up-train," he answered, and began to tug at his reins, and chirrup at Dobbin. They left him making great efforts to get under way again, and drove noiselessly on. "What a peculiarly condensed sort of man he is in his speech!" remarked Miss Pembroke. "Condensed!" exclaimed the other. "His talk reminds me of some one whose head and limbs have been cut off. It takes me by surprise, and leaves me astonished. I always feel as if something ought to be done." So one carriage creaked into the alders, and the other sparkled up to the house door. This door stood open, and within it sat an old woman, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes looking out over the water. She had a placid face, and looked refined. A sweet, faint smile greeted her visitors, and her voice was sweet, and was very low, as the voices of some deaf persons are. "Elizabeth has gone out on the water," she said. "I will call her." "Don't rise!" exclaimed Annette quickly, preventing her. "I'll get the horn for you. I know where everything is here." The old lady understood the action, though she had not heard the words, and sank back into her seat again. "She feels for everybody's pain," she said gratefully, speaking to herself. Annette tripped lightly across the sunny, silent room, and took down from a nail beside the chimney a large ox-horn suspended there. With simple politeness, the old lady obeyed her visitor's wish, and did not rise even when the horn was placed in her hand. She merely leaned forward, and, placing it to her lips, blew a loud and prolonged blast that sounded far over water and forest. "That will bring her," she said, and gave back the rustic instrument for Annette to return to its place. The two then strolled down to the water-side to wait for the lady of the lake. They seated themselves on a mossy rock close to the water, under the shade of the only tree left there. It was an old pine-tree, of which the main part was decayed, but one strong branch made a shade over them, and held firmly all its dark-green fasces in token of a sovereignty it would not abdicate while life remained. Beside the rock, in the warm sunshine, stood a group of Japan lilies. "I don't like them," Annette said. "They are beautiful in their way, but they look cruel and detestable. They seem to me like a large pink and white woman who poisons people." "My dear," said Miss Pembroke, as she bent her head over the flowers, "it would be well if you could contrive to shut the battery of those nerves of yours once in a while."