their heads and secretly pitied the man who became her husband.

As a friend Tibbie was perfect. She was a man’s woman. She could shoot or fish, she would play bridge and pay up honourably, she rode well, and she drove her 60 h.p. “Mercedes” better even than her own chauffeur. Old Lady Scarcliff—a delightful old person—had long ago given her up as hopeless. It was all Cynthia’s doing, for, truth to tell, her extravagances and her utter disregard for the convenances were the outcome of her residence with the Wydcombes.

I own frankly that I was sorry to see this change in her. The slim, rather prudish little love of my youth had now developed into that loud-speaking, reckless type of smart woman who nowadays is so much in evidence in Society. I much preferred her as I had known her years ago when my father and hers were intimate friends, and when I came so often to stay at Ryhall. True, our friendship had been a firm one always, but alas! I now detected a great change in her. Though so handsome, she was, as I had so very frankly told her, not exactly the kind of woman I should choose as a wife. And yet, after all, when I reflected I often thought her very sweet and womanly at home in the family circle.

My visit to Ryhall was to end on the morrow, and she had promised to drive me up to town on her car.

The men of the party had not yet returned from shooting, and in that calm sunset hour we were alone in the fine old gallery, with its splendid tapestries, its old carved coffers and straight-backed chairs, its rows of antlers and its armour of the dead-and-gone Scarcliffs. High in the long windows were the rose en soleil of Edward IV, the crown in the hawthorn bush of Henry VII, the wolf’s head crowned, the badge of the Scarcliffs, and other armorial devices, while the autumn sunlight slanting in threw coloured reflections upon the oaken floor worn smooth and polished by the feet of generations.

She was dressed in cream serge, a slight, dainty, neat-waisted figure, thrown into relief as she leaned back against the dark old panelling, laughing at my retort.

Her musical voice echoed down the long corridor, that old place that always seemed so far remote from the present day, and where the country folk declared that at night could be heard the footfall of the knight and the rustle of the lady’s kirtle.

Ryhall was indeed a magnificent old place, built by Sir Henry Burnet in the Tudor days, and pre-eminent to-day among the historic 

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