with his half-closed eyes turned in Lucy's direction.

"Are you asleep, or thinking hard?" Mrs. Chisholm asked him.

"Not more than half asleep," he laughed. "I was trying to remember _A
Dream of Fair Women_. It's a suitable occupation for a drowsy summer
afternoon in a place like this, but I must confess that it was Miss Vane
who put it into my head. She reminded me of one or two of the heroines
when she was championing the cause of the suffragist."

"You mustn't imagine that Englishwomen in general sympathize with her,
or that such ideas are popular at the Dene."

Carroll smiled reassuringly.

"I shouldn't have imagined the latter for a moment. But, as I said, on an
afternoon of this kind one may be excused for indulging in romantic
fancies. Don't you see what brought those old-time heroines into my mind?
I mean the elusive resemblance to their latter-day prototype?"

Mrs. Chisholm looked puzzled.

"No," she declared. "One of them was Greek, another early English, and
the finest of all was the Hebrew maid. As they couldn't have been like
one another, how could they, collectively, have borne a resemblance to
anybody else?"

"That's logical, on the surface. To digress, why do you most admire
Jephthah's daughter, the gentle Gileadite?"