"If you knew the state of my affairs!" he said darkly.
"A few days ago you told me they were very promising," she said with a little smile.
"So they would be—so they are—if if only you would care for me, Cicely!"
"You tell me they are promising when you want me to marry you, and desperate when you want me to sympathise with you," she said a little cruelly. "Which am I to believe?"
"Hush! Here's Sir Reginald," he said.
The gentleman who came through a door in the walled garden beside the house was a fresh-coloured, white-haired man of sixty; slender and not above middle height, but very erect, and with the carriage of a person a little conscious of being of some importance. Sir Reginald Cromarty was, in fact, extremely conscious of his position in life, and the rather superior and condescending air he was wont to assume in general society made it a little difficult for a stranger to believe that he could actually be the most popular person in the county; especially as it was not hard to discover that his temper could easily become peppery upon provocation. If, however, the stranger chanced to provide the worthy baronet with even the smallest opening of exhibiting his extraordinary kindness of heart—were it only by getting wet in a shower or mislaying a walking stick, he would quickly comprehend. And the baronet's sympathy never waited to be sum-
