“Now, what I should recommend you young people to do,” said her ladyship by-and-by, “is to go in search of the Haunted Pool, about which the guide was telling us this morning. He said it was not above a mile away, and, in any case, the woods themselves are most lovely just now. As for Mrs. Tew and I, we shall have a couple of comfortable chairs taken out into the shade of yonder oak, and there have a quiet gossip to ourselves. And don’t forget that tea will be ready at five o’clock to the minute.” We may be sure that Lisle and Ethel were by no means loth to carry out her ladyship’s behest, and presently they were lost to view among the green shadows of the wood. Lady Pell gazed after them with a well-satisfied smile, but it was with a sigh that the canon’s widow followed their retreating figures. “Oh, to be young again and in love!” she said, hardly witting that she spoke aloud. “And have all the troubled record of our lives to go through again,” said her ladyship. “For my part no such desire ever enters my mind. All things considered, I’m pretty well content to be as I am.” Perhaps for the moment she failed to remember that her life had many compensations denied to poor Mrs. Tew. It was one of those lovely October days which make a golden bridge between summer and winter. The woods were clothed with their richest garments—a kaleidoscope of gorgeous tints, albeit the vesture of decay; The dry leaves rustled under their feet, and little splashes of colour kept dropping round them as they went. Here and there a rabbit peered cautiously at them for a moment, showed a flash of white and was gone. Somewhere out of sight a robin was fluting a monody to the dying year. They walked on for some time in silence; Everard seemed to have left all his gaiety behind him. There was something about his changing moods to-day which Ethel failed to understand. She had known all along that his love had never altered or varied in the slightest, and of late her own heart had whispered its secret to her in accents she could no longer mistake. More than once during the last few weeks she had felt nearly sure Everard was on the point of saying that which, almost unknown to herself, she was secretly longing to hear; but the propitious moment had gone by and he had not spoken, and not improbably it was the vague sense of disappointment that had crept over her at such times which had first served to open her eyes to the truth as regarded herself.