child, whose devotion pleased him and whose strong character and
original mental development interested him. Later on he married a
lovely girl, as unlike Jane as one woman could possibly be to
another; but still their friendship held and deepened; and now, when
he was rapidly advancing to the very front rank of his profession,
her appreciation of his work, and sympathetic understanding of his
aims and efforts, meant more to him than even the signal mark of
royal favour, of which he had lately been the recipient.

Jane Champion had no close friends amongst the women of her set. Her
lonely girlhood had bred in her an absolute frankness towards
herself and other people which made it difficult for her to
understand or tolerate the little artificialities of society, or the
trivial weaknesses of her own sex. Women to whom she had shown
special kindness--and they were many--maintained an attitude of
grateful admiration in her presence, and of cowardly silence in her
absence when she chanced to be under discussion.

But of men friends she had many, especially among a set of young
fellows just through college, of whom she made particular chums;
nice lads, who wrote to her of their college and mess-room scrapes,
as they would never have dreamed of doing to their own mothers. She
knew perfectly well that they called her "old Jane" and "pretty
Jane" and "dearest Jane" amongst themselves, but she believed in the
harmlessness of their fun and the genuineness of their affection,
and gave them a generous amount of her own in return.

Jane Champion happened just now to be paying one of her long visits
to Overdene, and was playing golf with a boy for whom she had long
had a rod in pickle on this summer afternoon when the duchess went