“Yes, papa.” Bee’s little figure stole from behind him in the meekest way. She stopped in her progress towards the door to give a touch to the flowers on a side table; and then she went slowly on, going out. She had got her hand upon the handle of the door, and Colonel Kingsward thanked heaven he had got rid of her for the moment, when she turned round, eyeing him closely again though keeping by that means of escape. “Papa,” she said, softly, “after all the talk we have been having--you perhaps don’t remember that--you have never--answered my question yet.” “What question?” he said sharply. Bee put her hands together like a child, she looked at him beseechingly, coaxingly, like that child returning to its point, and then she said still more softly, “About Aubrey, dear papa!” CHAPTER XIV. I will not attempt to follow in detail the course of that autumn. It was a fine season, and Mrs. Kingsward was taken to her home in the country and recovered much of her lost health in the serene ending of the month and the bright days of October, which was a model October--everything that month ought to be. The trees had scarcely begun to take any autumnal colouring upon them when they reached Kingswarden--a house which stood among the Surrey hills; an old house placed not as modern houses are, pitched upon hillsides, or at points where there is “a view.” The old Kingswards had been moved by no such ridiculous modern sentiments. They had planted their mansion in a sheltered spot, where it would be safe from the winds that range over the country and all the moorland heights. The gates opened upon a wild country road with an extravagant breadth of green pathway and grassy bank on either side--enough to have made a farmer swear, but very pleasant to the eye and delightful to a horse’s feet, as well as to the pedestrians, whether they were tramps or tourists, who walked or rode on bicycles--the latter class only--from London to Portsmouth. The house was old, red, and straggling, covered with multitudes of creepers. Sheets of purple clematis--the Jackmanni, if anybody wishes to know; intolerable name for such a royal garment of blossom--covered half-a-dozen corners, hanging down in great brilliant wreaths over old ivy and straggling Virginia creeper and the strong stalks of the climbing roses, which still bore here and there a flower. Other sheets of other flowers threw themselves about in other places as if at their own sweet will, especially the wild exuberance of the Traveller’s Joy; though I need not say that this wildness was under the careful eye of the gardener, who would not let it go too far. I cannot attempt to tell how many other pleasant and fragrant and flowery things there were which insisted on growing in that luxurious place, even to the fastidious Highland creeper, which in that autumn season was the most gay, luxuriant, and delightful of all. The flowers abounded like the children, not to be checked, as healthy and as