At which she ran away, as was quite like her, when emotion suddenly got the better of her. The darkest cloud on this girl's life was the frail tenure of her father's existence. The rest could be endured. The work in the upstairs study went steadily on, in spite of the fact that James Stuart railed and that Miles Channing came at least once in seven days, driving the sixty miles in a long, swiftly speeding car which brought him to the door of the manse before the early May sunset, and which took him back when the shadows lay black upon the silent road. Two hours in the morning, three in the afternoon, Georgiana gave to the rigid performance of the tasks Mr. Jefferson set her, while outside below the windows at which she worked lay her garden, beloved of her affection, beseeching her not to neglect it. It was hard sometimes not to betray how she longed to be outside, as she wrote on and on, copying the often difficult and uninteresting language of the more technical part of her employer's construction. And one afternoon, lifting her eyes to let them dwell on a great budding purple lilac tree, with the warm breath of the breeze which had drifted across the apple orchard fanning her cheek, and all the notes of rioting spring in her ears, she did draw in spite of herself one deep sigh of longing which she instantly suppressed--too late. Her companion looked up quickly, noted the flush in the cheek and the hint of a weary shadow under the dark eyes, and suddenly pushed aside his paper. Then he drew it back, blotted it carefully, laid it with a pile of others, and capped his pen. He wheeled about in his chair to face his assistant. "Put down your work, please," he commanded gently; "precisely where you are. Don't finish that sentence." Georgiana looked up, astonished. "Not finish the sentence?" "No. Did you never stop in the middle of a sentence?" "I'm afraid I have. But I didn't suppose you ever did." "I don't. But I want you to. Please. That's right. You will know where to start it again to-morrow." "To-morrow?" In spite of herself her eyes had lighted as a child's might. "Even so. To-day we are going for a drive in all this beauty--if I can find a horse and some kind of a vehicle, and you will go with me. It's only three o'clock. We can have a long drive between now and the hour when you invariably disappear to make magic for our appetites. How about it?" "I can keep on perfectly well, you know," she said, with pen still poised above her paper. "But I can't." He was smiling. "Now that the other plan has occurred to me, I can't keep on." "Did you see inside my mind?" queried Georgiana, putting away her copying with rapid motions. "Suddenly I did. I've been rather blind, a hard taskmaster. I've been conscious of what was going on outside when I went for my walks, but the work is absorbing to me and I have kept you too steadily at it. We both need a rest," he added as she shook her head. CHAPTER XIV OUT OF THE BLUE