|She felt better for the girl's coming before the girl had come. Her household was not on so large a scale as to make it unnecessary for her to busy herself with preparations to receive a guest; and this business prevented her from dwelling upon her own position. She had no time left even to consider what steps, if any, she should take to further her design of winning back to herself the love which she had once cherished. Before she went to sleep on the next night it seemed to her that the time when Claude Westwood loved her was very far off; and before she woke it seemed to her that the time when she loved Claude Westwood was more remote still. She wondered if her maid and the housemaid would notice the disappearance of the miniature which had stood upon her table. With the thought she glanced in the direction of the drawer in which the fragments were laid--only for a moment, however; she had no time for further reflections. So far as the servants were concerned she might have made her mind easy. The housemaid had, when brushing out the room, come upon some small splinters of glass and ivory, and it did not require the possession on her part of the genius of a Sherlock Holmes to enable her to associate such a discovery with the disappearance of the only object of glass and ivory that had been in the room. There was a good deal of innuendo in the comments made in the kitchen upon the housemaid's discovery. The parlour-maid shook her head and turned her eyes up to the ceiling. The housemaid said that if she wished to say something she could say it. The cook, however, scorning all innuendo, made the far-reaching statement that all men are brutes, and challenged her auditors to deny it if they could. They could not deny it on the spur of the moment, though subsequently, when the cook was absent, they compared experiences, and came to the conclusion that the statement should be modified in order to be wholly accurate. The next day Agnes was overtaken in the village by Sir Percival Hope. She could not understand why it was that her face should flush on seeing him; it made her feel uncomfortable for a few moments, and then the strange thought crossed her mind that he was about to tax her with having told him that she and Claude Westwood were to be married. Sir Percival had certainly looked narrowly at her for some time. But then he had begun to talk upon some general topic of engrossing local interest--the curate's health, or something of that sort. (The curate lived on the reputation of having a weak chest, and every autumn his chest became a topic in the neighbourhood.) It was not until Sir Percival had walked back with her almost to the entrance to The Knoll that he said very quietly: “I wonder if you are happy now.” Again she felt her face flushing. “Happy--happy?” she said, interrogatively. “Happy in the prospect of happiness,” said he. “I suppose that is the simplest way of putting the matter.”