LITMIR.BIZ

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      Zella put out both hands with a gesture half timid, half eager, and wholly enchanting.

      Stephen caught them and held. them. for a moment. Then he deliberately bent and kissed them before giving her the shabby book in its stained and faded morocco cover.

      Zella had coloured deeply, and she bent her head over the gift in silence.

      "Shakespeare is about the only fellow I've cared to read, many a time," Stephen observed musingly. "He gets at reality, somehow, and, then, there's so much of him. I believe I know most of that book by heart; it's helped me through so many sleepless nights. I—I'm glad you'll keep that."

      "I haven't thanked you," faltered Zella, "but it's only because I can't." She fell back upon his own expression: "You know."

      And Stephen replied with great gentleness and gravity:

      "I know."

      "I shall keep it always," she said.

      There was an instant's pause, and it had hardly had time to become weighty before she added in a lighter tone, and half smiling:

      "It will remind me of you."

      Stephen followed her lead, and replied inevitably, but with much conviction in his voice:

      "I don't want you to need anything to remind you. I don't want to be forgotten, please, as soon as I leave here to-morrow. You're coming to stay with us for a shoot in September, aren't you?"

      "I haven't been asked yet."

      "But of course you'll be asked. You know that," he said vehemently. "My mother is longing to see you. And I want you to know her and to see the place."

      "I shall love it."

      "I want to show you the old pony I hunted my first season, and the pond where I caught tadpoles when I was a kid, and the old yew-tree I used to shin up on Sundays because the branches were so thick I was never found there, and couldn't be hauled in to my Catechism. And I want you to see the nursery I used to play in, and all sorts of things."

      "The nursery where you used to look out of the window and talk to the moon when you were lonely," said Zella, in order to show him that she had not forgotten,

      "So you've remembered that?"

      "Of course," she answered softly, looking up at him.

      Stéphanie de Kervoyou opened the door, and, far from following the tactful Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's example, advanced into the room, observing calmly to her niece:

      "Do you feel like tennis, Zella? They want to make up a sett, but it is too hot for Miss St. Craye, and I thought that perhaps you would play instead of her."

      "Of course," said Zella, unable to prevent herself from looking disconcerted.

      "I'm sorry my partner of yesterday has deserted," said Stephen casually; "I wanted to have our revenge for the beating you and your cousin gave us last time. Let us see if she can't be persuaded."

      The speech carried him easily to the door, and enabled him to follow his youthful hostess down to the tennis-court.

      They played tennis intermittently for the rest of the day.

      "He will propose to me to-night," thought Zella, her heart beating fast as she ran into the house at seven o'clock to don the impromptu fancy dress which her maid had been busy fitting and finishing for the last three days.

      "Is that you, mignonne?" called Louis as she went past the open door of the study.

      She came in and stood beside the writing-table at which he sat. He looked at her in silence for a moment, drumming his fingers absently upon the blotting-pad in front of him. There was a half-humorous, half-wistful expression in his eyes as they rested on the small dainty vision in her white frock. She somehow reminded him irresistibly of the child who had crept into his study after her mother's funeral, and told him that she would be a comfort to him.

      "It's been a very nice birthday," smiled Zella, in order to break the silence, "and I love these." She touched the pearls he had given her.

      "I'm glad of that. They look very well on you."

      He paused again.

      "So it's been a nice birthday."

      In the silence that followed the absently spoken words lay the only question that Louis would ever put to his daughter on the subject that filled both their thoughts.

      The breast of her white frock rose and fell rather more quickly than before, and she did not speak.

      "Enfin!" he said at last. "You are happy, sweetheart?"

      "Yes, very," she whispered emphatically, and kissed him before turning to run upstairs.

      In her fancy dress, she lit all the candles in her room, and gazed at herself in the mirror for a long time.

      She wore a peasant costume, of the convenient variety which can be called Swiss, Italian, or Norwegian, with equal unreason, and she looked charming. Her soft pale brown hair hung in two thick plaits over her shoulders, and excitement had brought a brilliant flush to her delicately colourless complexion. Her radiant grey eyes were shining as she looked at her own reflection.

      Alison St. Craye knocked at the door, and showed her disregard for conventionality by entering without pausing to receive the customary permission.

      Zella faced her critical gaze confidently.

      The value of Miss St. Craye's standards had diminished with strange rapidity in the last few days, and Zella's new sense of security was never more apparent to her than in the moment when, insensitive alike to Alison's praise or blame, she heard her murmured comment:

      "Charming, no doubt. But why—why so conventional?"

      "Is it?" she retorted, with an indifference that was not assumed. "It was all I could find on the spur of the moment, and I adore blue."

      "Crude," smiled Alison, raising her eyebrows. "However, subtle colours would be quite unsuited to you, and you look—charming."

      Her slight pause before the adjective contrived to make it sound kindly contemptuous.

      Zella noted, with an increasing sense of triumph, that she had no perceptible feelings of mortification.

      In her turn she spoke kindly:

      "Nothing could be lovelier than what you're wearing yourself. Do tell me the period."

      Alison folded her long, early Italian hands before her, turned her head slightly over one shoulder, and smiled slowly, her eyes half shut.

      Zella waited in vain for a reply.

      "Isn't it Italian?" she hazarded.

      Alison still said nothing, but the smile perceptibly stiffened

      "Anyhow, it is delightfully original," Zella felt it safe to remark.

      Alison uncrossed her hands, and tapped Zella rather smartly on the shoulder.

      "You have not the artist's eye," she said, with the light laugh of extreme annoyance.

      The affair remained mysterious to Zella until St. Algers, waiting for them at the foot of the stairs, greeted Alison's appearance with the enthusiasm of a creator.

      "Monna Lisa!" he exclaimed.

      St. Algers himself, with an ingeniously contrived hump, represented Polichinel, and indulged in an amount of gesticulation that was a sore trial to the patience of Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. But St. Algers was not destined to be the greatest thorn in her side that evening.

      James Lloyd-Evans had elected to garb himself in the skullcap and scarlet robes of a Cardinal.

      His appearance was greeted with a burst of applause, in which the delighted St. Algers, who had himself devised the costume and superintended the manipulation of the old red curtains of which it was mainly composed, joined almost with ecstasy.

      "Admirable!

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