There were rustic tables and chairs, a huge Japanese umbrella, every
accommodation for lounging, in that prettiest bit of the spacious old
orchard which adjoined the garden, and here Ida made this polite offer of
refreshment for mind or body.

'No, thank you; I'll stay here and smoke a cigarette. I can get on very
well without newspapers, having lived so long beyond easy reach of them.'

She left him, but glancing back at the garden gate she saw him take a
book from his pocket and settle himself in one of the basket chairs, with
a luxurious air, like a man perfectly content. This was a kind of thing
quite new to her in her experience of the Wendovers, who were not a
bookish race.

She went into the house, and made all her little preparations for
afternoon tea, filling the vases with freshly-cut flowers, drawing up
blinds, arranging book-tables, work-baskets, curtains--all the details of
the prettiest drawing-room in Kingthorpe, but walking to and fro all the
while like a creature in a dream. She had not half recovered from her
surprise, her painful wonder at Brian Wendover's appearance, at his
strange likeness to her ideal knight--strange to her, but not miraculous,
since such hereditary faces are to be found after the lapse of centuries.

When all her small duties had been performed she went up to her room,
bathed her face and brushed her hair, and put on a fresher gown, and then
sat down to read, trying to lose herself in the thoughts of another mind,
trying to forget this embarrassment, this sense of humiliation, which had
come upon her. She sat thus for half an hour or so, reading 'The
Caxtons,' one of her favourite novels, and felt a little more composed
and philosophical, when the rythmical beat of Brimstone and Treacle's