Rivers looked up now and then, but there was no apprehension in his eyes. He did not see her--he was in another world--a world where neither Phœbe Elles, nor any other woman, could follow him. That could not be helped, but meantime his physical presence sufficed the woman who adored him. Her tense nerve fibres were momentarily relaxed, she was soothed and lulled into a state of happy acquiescence in the present order of things. It had been very hot all this August day, but now the cool airs of evening were just beginning to qualify the dry heat that had been so intense as to blister the window shutters, and make the air seem to dance on the distant skyline of the moors. Mrs. Elles was very lightly dressed, her thin muslin shirt showed the rosy skin of her shoulder that rested against the jamb of the window frame, half in, half out. She deliberately inhaled the sweet aromatic smell of the jessamine and the phloxes that grew under the window, and the mild breath of the cows that leaned over the fence. There were people in the garden, she could hear their whispering voices. “Lovers probably,” she thought--“the landlady’s sons courting their lasses. How sweet it all is!” After half an hour’s steady work, the painter became restless. Perhaps he remembered the advent of the presumed cyclist, and if he did, it worried him. He seemed to be listening once or twice to vague sounds heard in the passage outside, then he began to walk about. Once he brought up sharply in his walk in front of the stack of umbrellas and travelling gear in the corner of the room, and stood there. She happened to be looking out into the garden just then, or she would have thought this terribly ominous, and all her peace of mind would have been destroyed. When he came back to the table, he looked at the drawing and shook his head. That gesture escaped her too. Then he left the room and she saw him stroll deviously up the garden and look over the gate into the fields. When he came back, she had not moved or in any way modified the picture of restful contentment she presented. He looked at her--a puzzled look--then he said: “I have seen the new lodger!” he said. “At least I think it was she!” “You have? A woman?” “Yes, a tall, handsome personage, dressed all in forbidding and ponderous black. She was sitting in the arbour out there, talking to Jane Anne in a very friendly way.” “It was the girl’s own mother, probably. Every girl of her class has got a bombazine mother that she produces on occasion.” “Jane Anne is an orphan. Besides this was more than bombazine--it was--it was something very handsome, if I know anything about it--which I don’t!” “No, there’s no black in nature!” said Mrs. Elles, smiling fondly at him. “And I should not expect you to know much about women’s dress. My--er--father knows there are such things as ruches and pipings, and that is all.”