by it. Two o'clock, striking just then, reminded her of the impending
interview with her guardian. A tremor shook her, and she felt a craving
for some solitary hiding-place in which to await the summons. But it
was a point of honor with her to appear perfectly indifferent to her
trouble, so she stayed with the girls, laughing and chatting as they
watched Smilash intently marking out the courts and setting up the nets.
She made the others laugh too, for her hidden excitement, sharpened by
irrepressible shootings of dread, stimulated her, and the romance of
Smilash's disguise gave her a sensation of dreaming. Her imagination was
already busy upon a drama, of which she was the heroine and Smilash
the hero, though, with the real man before her, she could not indulge
herself by attributing to him quite as much gloomy grandeur of character
as to a wholly ideal personage. The plot was simple, and an old favorite
with her. One of them was to love the other and to die broken-hearted
because the loved one would not requite the passion. For Agatha,
prompt to ridicule sentimentality in her companions, and gifted with an
infectious spirit of farce, secretly turned for imaginative luxury to
visions of despair and death; and often endured the mortification of the
successful clown who believes, whilst the public roar with laughter at
him, that he was born a tragedian. There was much in her nature, she
felt, that did not find expression in her popular representation of the
soldier in the chimney.

By three o'clock the local visitors had arrived, and tennis was
proceeding in four courts, rolled and prepared by Smilash. The two
curates were there, with a few lay gentlemen. Mrs. Miller, the vicar,
and some mothers and other chaperons looked on and consumed light
refreshments, which were brought out upon trays by Smilash, who
had borrowed and put on a large white apron, and was making himself
officiously busy.