friendly glee and wreathed her face with smiles. When she went into the
cottage where the cake was being baked, children hovered about in groups
and nudged each other, giggling. They hung about, partly through
thrilled interest, and partly because their joy made them eager to
courtesy to her as she came out, the obeisance seeming to identify them
even more closely with the coming treat. They grinned and beamed rosily,
and Emily smiled at them and nodded, uplifted by a pleasure almost as
infantile as their own. She was really enjoying herself so honestly that
she did not realise how hard she worked during the days before the
festivity. She was really ingenious, and invented a number of new
methods of entertainment. It was she who, with the aid of a couple of
gardeners, transformed the tents into bowers of green boughs and
arranged the decorations of the tables and the park gates.

"What a lot of walking you do!" Lord Walderhurst said to her once, as
she passed the group on the lawn. "Do you know how many hours you have
been on your feet to-day?"

"I like it," she answered, and, as she hurried by, she saw that he was
sitting a shade nearer to Lady Agatha than she had ever seen him sit
before, and that Agatha, under a large hat of white gauze frills, was
looking like a seraph, so sweet and shining were her eyes, so
flower-fair her face. She looked actually happy.

"Perhaps he has been saying things," Emily thought. "How happy she will
be! He has such a nice pair of eyes. He would make a woman very happy."
A faint sigh fluttered from her lips. She was beginning to be physically
tired, and was not yet quite aware of it. If she had not been physically
tired, she would not even vaguely have had, at this moment, recalled to
her mind the fact that she was not of the women to whom "things" are