Nina, reaching for a marron, obediently wandered away, and
immediately the empty chair beside Harriet was taken by a
newcomer, Richard Carter himself, the owner of all this smiling
estate, who had come up from the little launch at the landing, had
changed hastily into white flannels, Harriet saw at a glance, and
had unexpectedly joined them for tea. His usual programme was to
go off immediately for golf, and to make his first appearance in
the family at dinner-time, but perhaps it had been unusually
tiring in the city to-day--he looked pale and tired, and as if
some of the grime of the sun-baked streets clung about him still.

"Tea, Mr. Carter?" Harriet ventured.

He was watching his wife with a sort of idle interest. She had to
repeat her invitation.

"If you please, Miss Field! Tea sounded right, somehow, to me to-
day. It's been a terrible day!"

"I can imagine it!" Harriet's voice was pleasantly commonplace.
But the moment had its thrill for her. This lean, tall, tired man,
with his abstract manner, his perfunctory courtesies, his nervous,
clever hands, loomed in oddly heroic proportions in Harriet's
life. His face was keen and somewhat lined under a smooth crest of
slightly graying hair; he smiled very rarely, but there was a
certain kindliness in his gray eyes, when Nina or Ward or his wife
turned to him, that Harriet liked. He came and went quietly,
absorbed in his business, getting in and out of his cars with a
murmur to his chauffeur, disappearing with his golf sticks,