Hurst Dormer was a fine old place, yet of late to him it had grown
singularly dull and cheerless. He had loved it all his life, but
latterly he had realised that there was something missing, something
without which the old house could not be home to him, and in his dreams
waking and sleeping he had seen this same little white-clad figure
seated at the foot of the great table in the dining-hall.

He had seen her in his mind's eye doing those little housewifely duties
that the mistresses of Hurst Dormer had always loved to do, her slender
fingers busy with the rare and delicate old china, or the
lavender-scented linen, or else in the wonderful old garden, the
gracious little mistress of all and of his heart.

And now she sat drooping like a wilted lily beside the green pond,
because of her love for another man, and his honest heart ached that it
should be so.

"Marjorie!" he said.

She lifted a tear-stained face and held out her hand' to him silently.

He patted her hand gently, as one pats the hand of a child. "Is--is it
so bad, little girl? Do you care for him so much?"

"Better than my life!" she said. "Oh, if you knew!"

"I see," he said quietly. He sat staring at the green waters, stirred
now and again by the fin of a lazy carp. He realised that there would be
no sweet girlish, golden-haired little mistress for Hurst Dormer, and