As to the mistress of the house, at any rate, there was no need for caution. The clocks of the house had barely followed the church clock in striking the half-hour when the workmen on the ground floor saw Lady Kitty come down-stairs and go through the drawing-room window into the garden. There she gave her opinion on the preparations, pushing on afterwards into the park, where she astounded the various contractors and their workmen by her appearance at such an hour, and by the vigor and decision of her orders. Finally she left the park behind, just as its broad, scorched surfaces began everywhere to shake off the mist, and entered one of the bordering woods. She had a basket on her arm, and, when she had found for herself a mossy seat amid the roots of a great oak, she unpacked it. It contained a mass of written pages, some fresh scribbling-paper, ink and pens, and a small portfolio. When they were all lying on the moss beside her, Kitty turned over the sheets with a loving hand, reading here and there. "It is good!" she said to herself. "I vow it is!" Dipping her pen in the ink, she began upon corrections. The sun filtered through the thick leafage overhead, touching her white dress, her small shoes, and the masses of her hair. She wore a Leghorn garden-hat, tied with pink ribbons under her chin, and in her morning freshness and daintiness she looked about seventeen. The hours of sleep had calmed the restlessness of the wide, brown eyes; they were full now of gentleness and mirth. "I wonder if he'll come?" She looked up and listened. And as she did so, her eyes and sense were seized with the beauty of the wood. The mystery of early solitary hours seemed to be still upon it; both in the sunlight and the shadow there was a magic unknown to the later day. In a clearing before her spread a lake of willow-herb, of a pure bright pink, hemmed in by a golden shore of ragwort. The splash of color gave Kitty a passionate delight. "Dear, dear world!" She stretched out her hands to it in a childish greeting. Then the joy died sharply from her eyes. "How many years left--to enjoy it in--before one dies--or one's heart dies?" Invariably, now, her moments of sensuous pleasure ended in this dread of something beyond--of a sudden drowning of beauty and delight--of a future unknown and cruel, coming to meet her, like some armed assassin in a narrow path. William! When it came could William save her? "William is a _darling_!" she said to herself, her face full of yearning.