The Well-Beloved

ripping forth. She went round out of sight to where the gardener was at work, and presently returned with a bunch of green stuff fluttering in each hand.

ay to attend a review of the yeomanry in the watering-place over the bay, on their stating that they could provide a temporary substitute to stay in the house. T

ow to adjust a blind which had slipped, and he had a good view of her profile. It was not unlike that of one of the three goddesses in Rub

his, Avice?' he ask

-smiled, merely mur

oticed it, nor would he, but that he knew of the same mark in her mother's mouth, and looked for it here. Till Avice the Second had revealed it this

icle of her next debut, she attracted him by the cadences of her voice; she would suddenly drop it to a rich whisper of roguishness, when the slight rural monotony of its narrative speech disappeared, and soul and heart-or what seemed soul and heart-resounded. The charm lay in the intervals, using that word

He took special pains that in catching her voice he might not comprehend her words. To the tones

en road, keeping his eye on the little hat with its bunch of cock's feathers as on a s

ugh of black materials in the quietest form, was of a cut which rather suggested London than this Ultima Thule. For the minute he forgot, in his curiosity, that Avice

there? Pierston asked himself

d that she had left the church by the side-door. Supposing it to have been Mrs. Pine-Avon, she would probably be discovered staying at one of the hotels at the watering-place over the

rest of the congregation. Turning at length, he hastened homeward along the now deserted trackway, intending to overtake the revitalized Avice. But he could see nothing of her, a

ons on the road being a man and his wife, as he knew them to

, you'd cut my acquaintance! That'

was now lighted: she must have come round by the other road. Satisfied that she was safely

o the rocks and shore on this side. Without the door was a dip-well of pure water, which possibly had supplied the inmates of the adjoining and now ruinous Red King's

o show dimples at the elbows, and were set off by her purple cotton print, which the shore-breeze licked and tantalized. He stood near, without

perceive that her assistant was Pierston. She had plainly been so wrapped in her ow

kness, showing neither ardour nor shyness. As for love-it was

actable Jocelyn said, 'Do you hold

in placing a pebble

coddled from her slopping. In setting down the last stone h

'O, I have bruised the skin, Avice!' He se

r hand without the least objection. 'Why-that's where I scratched it th

pe bow upon each arm. He knew what it meant, and it sadden

am going there tonight

inds were not down, and he could see her sewing within. While he paused she sprang up as if she had forgotten the hour, and tossed on her

he wayside, and took the direction of the church. With the disappearance of the sun the lighthouse had again s

r mother much?

girl, who tripped so lightly that it see

ike to disclose events which she, apparently, nev

ved false to her because she wouldn't agree to meet him one night, and it grieved mother almost all her life. I wouldn't ha' fret

where he did stand in the ranks of an imaginative profession if he had not been at the mercy of every haunting of the fancy that can beset man. It was in his weak

r flitting from Nichola Pine-Avon to the phantom of a dead woman whom he never adored in her lifetime, had taken up her abode in the living repre

it was, told him that she was colder in nature, commoner in character, than that well read, bright little woman Avice the First. But twenty years make a difference in ideals, and the added demands of middle-age in phys

to be madness: then he was compelled to make believe his madness wisdom. In those days any flash of reason upon his loved one's imperfections was bl

ctly, ideally, supplement his own imperfect one and round with it the perfect whole-was yet the only family he had ever met, or was likely to meet, which possessed the materi