when Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had applied to her the adjectives "young " and "inexperienced."
XXVIII
IT was on the night of Zella's birthday that St. Algers was allowed to indulge his peculiar desire for a fancy-dress dinner. Hurried notes were sent to the houses within possible distance of a drive, and an impromptu dance organized.
"It is only for once in a way, after all, and one must amuse young people," Mrs. Lloyd-Evans felt impelled to observe apologetically to her brother-in-law, who replied candidly:
"I admit to you, Marianne, that it also amuses me, though I am not a young person. It will be most entertaining to devise these costumes."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans became slightly reserved in manner.
"I quite see what you mean, dear Louis. A little fun and nonsense is harmless from time to time, as I always say; and though it may seem silly enough to us, all this dressing-up amuses these boys and girls, I suppose."
It amuses me far more than it does them," said Louis briskly. "Amusement is not at all the predominant factor in James's feelings this morning, unless I am much mistaken. And Pontisbury is probably overwhelmed by the British fear that any sort of fancy dress must necessarily make a fool of him. Even Miss St. Craye is contemptuous, and declines to admit any interest in the subject."
"That is a mere pose, Louis, and great nonsense besides. But I am delighted," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with sorrowful astonishment, "to hear that all this is amusing you. I suppose you do not intend to dress up yourself?"
"Why not? I have, on the contrary, every intention of doing so, and am now on my way to find out whether I am grown too corpulent for any of my old theatrical costumes!"
He was gone before Mrs. Lloyd-Evans could devise any allusion that should be at once tactful and pointed, as to the suitability or otherwise of middle-aged widowers making mountebanks of themselves. She retreated sombrely into the morning-room, and, finding Stephen Pontisbury there in earnest conversation with Zella, exclaimed with ready ease that one only had to come downstairs in order to find that one's knitting was upstairs, and made her exit with smiling naturalness through the French window into the garden.
Stephen had not, as Zella had half expected, sought her at eleven o'clock in the morning in order to ask her to marry him.
But he sat on the arm of the sofa, swinging one large foot gently to and fro, and looking at her with intent blue eyes.
"I wanted to give you a birthday present," he said slowly. "It isn't new, but—it's just something I care about a great deal."
She raised her eyes to his, and was wise enough to keep a silence which might be translated into the appropriate words which she was unable to find.
He was balancing a flat volume upon his palm.
"I've had this by me since I was a boy," he said deliberately. "It's been in camp, and in a hut out at 'Frisco, and other places, too, back o' beyond. . . ."
He paused.
Zella felt as though they were two people in a book. "The stain on the cover here has a story, though it's not one I could tell you." "Tell me."
He shook his head, with a half-smile.
"Not that—no. But it's been sort of mascot to me. It's only a Shakespeare, you know, but I wanted to give it to you instead of a new copy just because— well, you know."
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
