Mary's prospects were decidedly nipped in the bud, as Alicia perhaps intended that they should be; but Alicia's avowed motive was so praiseworthy that Mary allowed herself only an inner discontent, and, what with her good-humored demeanor, Odd's placid chat of crops and tenantry, and Alicia's acquiescent beauty, the trio seemed to enjoy the mile of beechwood and country road and the short sweep of prettily wooded drive that led to Allersley Priory, a square stone house covered with vines of magnolia and wisteria, and incorporating in its walls, according to tradition, portions of the old Priory which once occupied the site. From the back of the house sloped a wide expanse of lawn and shrubberies, and past it ran the river that half a mile further on flowed out of Captain Archinard's little property into Odd's. The drawing-room was on the ground-floor, and its windows opened on this view. Mrs. Archinard and the Captain were talking to young Lord Allan Hope, eldest son of Lord Mainwaring. Mrs. Archinard's invalidism was evidently not altogether fictitious. She had a look of at once extreme fragility and fading beauty. One knew at the first glance that she was a woman to have cushions behind her and her back to the light. There was no character in the delicate head, unless one can call a passive determination to do or feel nothing that required energy, character. The two little girls came in while Odd talked to their father. They were dressed alike in white muslins. Katherine's gown reached her ankles; Hilda's was still at the _mi-jambe_ stage. Their long hair fell about their faces in childlike fashion. Katherine's was brown and strongly rippled; Hilda's softly, duskily, almost bluely black; it grew in charming curves and eddies about her forehead, and framed her little face and long slim neck in straightly falling lines. Katherine gave Odd her hand with a little air that reminded him of a Velasquez Infanta holding out a flower. "You were splendid this morning, Mr. Odd. That hole was no joke, and Hilda swallowed lots of water as it was. She might easily have been drowned." Katherine was certainly not pretty, but her deeply set black eyes had a dominant directness. She held her head up, and her smile was charming--a little girl's smile, yet touched with the conscious power of a clever woman. Odd felt that the child was clever, and that the woman would be cleverer. He felt, too, that the black eyes were lit with just a spice of fun as they looked into his as though she knew that he knew, and they both knew together, that Hilda had not been in much danger, and that his ducking had been only conventionally "splendid."