"A dog's life isn't peace, mamma," she answers, with the simple air of a discoverer of truth. But, nevertheless, she looks about for fresh worlds to conquer. "Even Mr. Maitland was better than this," she announces, after a long yawn of discontent, "though he was dull enough, I wonder why he did not come in July. Do you know, Joan?" "Oh, Agnes, do let us have a moment's peace for once! We are not dogs," cried Joan fretfully. Wonder! she was always wondering. This very minute, while her eyes were on the page, it was in her mind. Through all those three months passing hour by hour and day by day, she could assure herself that when he had come and gone, she would be at rest again; things would be as before with her. Let him come and go! But when July arrived, and he did not, a sharper pain made itself felt. Bravely as she strove to beat it down, well as she might hide it from others, the certainty that it had needed no second repulse to balk his love sorely hurt her pride. Just her pride, she told herself; nothing else. That he had not stood the test he had himself proposed; that any unacknowledged faintest hope she might have cherished, deep down in her heart, that he might master her by noble persistence, must now be utterly quenched; these things of course had no bitterness for her through the hot August days; had nothing to do with the wearied look that sometimes dulled the gray eyes, nor with the sudden indifference or as sudden enthusiasms for lawn tennis and dogs and pigeons, that marked her daily moods. Agnes' teasing, by putting her meditations into words, has disturbed her. She gets up and moves restlessly about, touching this thing and that, and at last leaves the room and stands in the hall, thinking. Here, too, it is dark and cool, and made to seem more so--the door into the garden being open--by the hot glare of sunshine falling upon the spotless doorstep. She glances at this listlessly. The house is still, the servants are at the back; the dogs all worn out by the heat. Then, as she hesitates, a slight crunching of footsteps upon the gravel comes to her ear, breaking the silence. A sudden black shadow falls upon the sunny step and tells of a visitor. Someone chases away his shadow, and steps upon the stone, and raises his gloved hand to the bell. Charles Maitland at last! Coming straight in from the sunshine he cannot see the swift welcome that springs to eye and cheek, a flash of light and color, quick to come and go. He is too much moved himself to mark how her hand shakes. He sees no difference in her. But she sees a change in him. She detects some subtle difference that eludes her attempt to define its nature and only fills her with a vague sense that this is not the Charles Maitland from whom she parted. It is a meeting she has pictured often, but not at all like this. He signs to her to take him into the dining room, the door of which stands open. "I have come back, Miss Joan."