manner, she rose and, bending over Katherine's chair, kissed her. "I'm
sorry, dear," she said, in pretty penitence. "I know it was an
abominable and unladylike thing to say, but my tongue sometimes runs
away with my thoughts. Forgive me."

At that moment a man dressed in rough tweeds and leggings, who had
emerged from the stable side of the manor-house, crossed the terrace,
and, descending the steps, walked over the lawn towards the two ladies.
He had massive shoulders and a thick, strong neck, coarse reddish hair,
and a moustache of a lighter shade. Blue eyes looked with a curious
childish pathos out of a face tanned by sun and weather. He slouched
slightly in his gait, like the heavy man accustomed to the saddle. This
was Dick Ware, the elder of the brothers and heir to fallen fortunes,
mortgaged house and lands, and he gave the impression of failure, of a
man who, in spite of thews and sinews, had been unable to grapple with
circumstance.

Viviette left Katherine to her needlework, and advanced to meet him. At
her spontaneous act of welcome a light came into his eyes. He removed
from his lips the short corn-cob pipe he was smoking.

"I've just been looking at the new mare. She's a beauty. I know I
oughtn't to have got her, but she was going dirt cheap--and what can a
man do when he's offered a horse at a quarter its value?"

"Nothing, my dear Dick, save pay four times as much as he can afford."

"But we had to get a new beast," he argued seriously. "We can't go about
the country in a donkey-cart. If I hadn't bought one, Austin would, for
the sake of the family dignity--and I do like to feel independent of