The other woman's name was unpropitious,--Miss Smith,--but you would never have suspected it from her face and costume. Her parentage was promising, she was an orphan, her mother was a Hindoo, and her father an Indian civil servant; and Aubrey Vair--himself a happy mixture of Kelt and Teuton, as, indeed, all literary men have to be nowadays--naturally believed in the literary consequences of a mixture of races. She was dressed in white. She had finely moulded pale features, great depth of expression, and a cloud of delicately _frisé_ black hair over her dark eyes, and she looked at Aubrey Vair with a look half curious and half shy, that contrasted admirably with the stereotyped frankness of your common Reigate girl. "This is a splendid lawn--the best in Redhill," said Aubrey Vair in the course of the conversation; "and I like it all the better because the daisies are spared." He indicated the daisies with a graceful sweep of his rather elegant hand. "They are sweet little flowers," said the lady in white, "and I have always associated them with England, chiefly, perhaps, through a picture I saw 'over there' when I was very little, of children making daisy chains. I promised myself that pleasure when I came home. But, alas! I feel now rather too large for such delights." "I do not see why we should not be able to enjoy these simple pleasures as we grow older--why our growth should have in it so much forgetting. For my own part"-- "Has your wife got Jane's recipe for stuffing trout?" asked Mrs. Bayne's deaf aunt abruptly. "I really don't know," said Aubrey Vair. "That's all right," said Mrs. Bayne's deaf aunt. "It ought to please even you." "Anything will please me," said Aubrey Vair; "I care very little"-- "Oh, it's a lovely dish," said Mrs. Bayne's deaf aunt, and relapsed into contemplation. "I was saying," said Aubrey Vair, "that I think I still find my keenest pleasures in childish pastimes. I have a little nephew that I see a great deal of, and when we fly kites together, I am sure it would be hard to tell which of us is the happier. By the bye, you should get at your daisy chains in that way. Beguile some little girl." "But I did. I took that Morton mite for a walk in the meadows, and timidly broached the subject. And she reproached me for suggesting 'frivolous pursuits.' It was a horrible disappointment." "The governess here," said Aubrey Vair, "is robbing that child of its youth in a terrible way. What will a life be that has no childhood at the beginning?" "Some human beings are never young," he continued, "and they never grow up. They lead absolutely colourless lives. They are--they are etiolated. They never love, and never feel the loss of it. They are--for the moment I can think of no better image--they are human flower-pots, in which no soul has been planted. But a human soul properly growing must begin in a fresh childishness."