eyes they met, not boldly, but with a kind of virginal fearlessness
and enterprise that people often found embarrassing. Indeed she was
extremely virginal and devoid of the usual fringe of feminine airs and
graces, a nymph of the woods and waters, who although she was three and
twenty, as yet recked little of men save as companions whom she liked
or disliked according to her instincts. For the rest she was sweetly
dressed in a white robe with silver on it, and wore no ornaments save
a row of small pearls about her throat and some lilies of the valley at
her breast.

Barbara came straight onwards, looking neither to the right or to the
left, till she reached her uncle, to whom she nodded. Then she walked to
Alan and, offering him her hand, said:

"How do you do! Why did you not come over at lunch time? I wanted to
play a round of golf with you this afternoon."

Alan answered something about being busy at Yarleys.

"Yarleys!" she replied. "I thought that you lived in the City now,
making money out of speculations, like everyone else that I know."

"Why, Miss Champers," broke in Sir Robert reproachfully, "I asked you to
play a round of golf before tea and you would not."

"No," she answered, "because I was waiting for my cousin. We are better
matched, Sir Robert."

There was something in her voice, usually so soft and pleasant, as she
spoke these words, something of steeliness and defiance that caused