Recalled to him and to her womanliness, "Oh, your coat!" she exclaimed. "You've been getting hot and you'll catch your death of chill. You're dreadfully careless. Where is it?" "In the summer-house. But what rot!" "I'll get it." She slipped her arm from his hand and ran away across the lawn. "There!" she said, returning. "Now button it up. Ah! You're all thumbs!" She fastened it for him and turned up the collar. The action brought her face close to his. "You're jolly good to me, Nellie," he said, and his lips brushed her forehead. A kiss it had been, but she drew back a step. "Not going to have you ill on my hands," she told him brightly. Then she slipped a hand into his arm and resumed, "What are we going to do--first? I want to talk about that." She had talked to him of it all the morning; but as if it were undiscussed--anything to preserve these happy moments--"Yes, go on," he said. She responded eagerly. "Well, we must write to Lady Burdon, of course--Jane Lady Burdon, now, you said, didn't you? Not to-day. Better wait a day--to-morrow." "That is what I thought." "Yes--yes--and then you will have to go to see her. By yourself. I won't come at first." She gave a little sound of laughter. "I don't think I shall much like Jane Lady Burdon, from what you told me this morning." He asked her: "Good lord, why, Nellie? Why, what did I tell you? I've only seen her once, years and years ago." "You made her out proud; you said she would feel this terribly." "That poor boy's death? Of course she would. She was devoted to him. Look, he was no more than Rollo's age when his father died. She brought him up. Been mother and father to him all his life. Imagine how she'd feel it." "Oh, I don't mean that; feel us coming in, I mean. Proud in that way." It was an idea that another man, though he knew it true, would have laughed aside. Mr. Letham's hopeless simplicity put him to a stumbling explanation. "Ah, but proud's not the word--not fair," he said. "She has pride; you understand the difference, don't you, old girl? A tremendous family pride. She'll feel this break in the direct descent--father to son, as it said in the newspaper, ever since there was a Burdon. It is one of their traditions, at the bottom of half their traditions, and they're simply wrapped up in that kind of thing. I should think there never was a family with so many observances--laws of its own."