Freddy Allyne, as he was called by his friends, whose name was legion, prided himself upon having established a reputation for levity, when his real character was that of a philosopher strongly inclined to pessimism. On no one did he enjoy palming a false idea of himself more than on himself. Life has many of these jesters whose motley serves but poorly to hide from others, and not at all from themselves, the fact that this fool is as wise as some whom he could mention and whom it is the delight of his soul to play with as he chooses. Between him and the clever woman who was now standing on the terrace at Drayton Hall there had always been kept up a particularly active warfare, for Mrs. March was the one woman in London who did not fear him, and, while this nettled him and sometimes seriously annoyed him, it fascinated and led him on. A score of times the wise had foretold a speedy match between these two, who were never so widely parted at a dinner-table but they pursued each other without quarter to the very finish of an argument. Until quite recently Mrs. March herself had vaguely but persistently assumed that Allyne would declare himself sooner or later, and at that time had somewhat doubted her ability to deny the man whose brilliant intellect, generous impulses and fundamentally noble nature had come to mean more to her than she dared or wished to allow herself to realize. But some little time before this Allyne observed that a change had come to pass and that she held herself distinctly aloof from him whenever they were alone, and had even gone so far as to refuse to be at home to him unless she was certain that others would be by. He interpreted this departure as evidence of her feeling that the time had arrived when their friendship must go further—or safeguard itself by greater restraint. From a safe distance in the park he had watched her as she and Travers talked—with not the remotest notion of the subject they were discussing. When at last he saw Travers raise his hat formally and retire into the house, and Mrs. March remain leaning against the parapet on the terrace, he thought the hour had come. “What? Back so soon?” cried Mrs. March, seeing him coming across the stretch of lawn toward her. “You do walk fast, don’t you?” “The church was shut,” replied Allyne, with his customary bantering tone and approaching close to her. “Yes, the church was shut, and I fed the swans in the pond instead.” “But you surely have not walked four miles and fed swans all in ten minutes?” asked Mrs. March, clearing for action, and keenly appreciating the relief that this diversion afforded to the strain of the past few minutes. “Oh, dear me, no,” drawled Allyne innocently. “You see, I remembered that they always shut churches after service, so I knew that this one would be shut. Awfully pretty swans of Poynter’s, too. Ever seen them? They float about the pond like a lot of duchesses in a drawing-room—and fight over the crumbs like them, also.”