flowered embrasures of the park, and a fragrant abundance of flowers met
the eye and cheered the senses. While Richard loitered on the steps with
the child and its nurse, more excited than he knew, Lali came out and
stood beside him. At the moment Richard was looking into the distance.
He did not hear her when she came. She stood near him for a moment, and
did not speak. Her eyes followed the direction of his look, and idled
tenderly with the prospect before her. She did not even notice the
child. The same thought was in the mind of both--with a difference.
Richard was wondering how any one could choose to change the sweet
dignity of that rural life for the flaring, hurried delights of London
and the season. He had thought this a thousand times, and yet, though he
would have been little willing to acknowledge it, his conviction was not
so impregnable as it had been.

Mrs. Francis Armour was stepping from the known to the unknown. She was
leaving the precincts of a life in which, socially, she had been born
again. Its sweetness and benign quietness had all worked upon her nature
and origin to change her. In that it was an out-door life, full of
freshness and open-air vigour, it was not antagonistic to her past. Upon
this sympathetic basis had been imposed the conditions of a fine social
decorum. The conditions must still exist. But how would it be when she
was withdrawn from this peaceful activity of nature and set down among
"those garish lights" in Cavendish Square and Piccadilly? She hardly
knew to what she was going as yet. There had been a few social functions
at Greyhope since she had come, but that could give her, after all, but
little idea of the swing and pressure of London life.

At this moment she was lingering over the scene before her. She was
wondering with the naive wonder of an awakened mind. She had intended
many times of late saying to Richard all the native gratitude she felt;