"Doctor Hilary has been over here rather often lately," remarked Miss Tibb.u.t.t one afternoon. Pia and she were sitting in the garden together.

"Old Mrs. Mosely is ill," returned Pia smiling oracularly.

"But only a very little ill," said Miss Tibb.u.t.t reflectively. "Her daughter told me only yesterday--I'm afraid it wasn't very grateful of her--that the Doctor had been 'moidering around like 'sif mother was on her dying bed, and her wi' naught but a bit o' cold to her chest, what's gone to her head now, and a gla.s.s or two o' hot cider, and ginger, and allspice, and rosemary will be puttin' right sooner nor you can flick a fly off a sugar basin.'"

Pia laughed.

"My dear Tibby, he doesn't come to see Mrs. Mosely."

Miss Tibb.u.t.t looked up in perplexed query.

"He comes on here to tea, doesn't he?" asked Pia, kindly, after the manner of one giving a lead.

"Certainly," returned Miss Tibb.u.t.t, still perplexed. "He would naturally do so, since he is in Woodleigh just at tea time."

Pia leant back in her seat, and looked at Miss Tibb.u.t.t.

"Tibby dear, you're amazingly slow at the uptake."

Miss Tibb.u.t.t blinked at Pia over her spectacles.

"Please explain," said she meekly.

Pia laughed.

"Haven't you discovered, Tibby dear, that it's Trix he comes to see?"

"Trix!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miss Tibb.u.t.t.

"Yes; and she is quite as unaware of the fact as you are, so don't, for all the world, enlighten her. Leave that to him, if he means to."

Miss Tibb.u.t.t had let her work fall, and was gazing round-eyed at Pia.

"But, my dear Pia, he's years older than Trix."

"Oh, not so very many," said Pia rea.s.suringly. "Fifteen or sixteen, perhaps. Trix is twenty-four, you know."

"And Trix is leaving here the day after to-morrow," said Miss Tibb.u.t.t regretfully.

"London isn't the antipodes," declared Pia. "She can come here again, or business may take Doctor Hilary to London. There are trains."

"Well, well," said Miss Tibb.u.t.t.

Trix appeared at the open drawing-room window and came out on to the terrace. She paused for a moment to pick a dead rose off a bush growing near the house. Then she saw the two under the lime tree. She came towards them.

"Doctor Hilary has just driven up through the plantation gate," she said.

"I suppose he's coming to tea. His man was evidently going to put up the horse."

The d.u.c.h.essa glanced at a gold bracelet watch on her wrist.

"It's four o'clock," she said.

"He takes tea quite for granted," smiled Trix.

"I suppose," responded the d.u.c.h.essa, "that he considers five almost consecutive invitations equivalent to one standing one."

"Well, anyhow I should," nodded Trix. "What are you looking so wise about, Tibby angel?"

Miss Tibb.u.t.t started. "Was I looking wise? I didn't know."

Trix perched herself on the table.

"Dale will clear me off in a minute," she announced. "I suppose you'll have tea out here as usual. Till then it's the nicest seat. Oh dear, I wish I wasn't going home to-morrow. That's not a hint to you to ask me to stay longer. I shouldn't hint, I'd speak straight out. But I must join Aunt Lilla at her hydro place. She's getting lonely. She wants an audience to which to relate her partner's idiocy at Bridge, and someone to help carry her photographic apparatus. Also someone to whom she can keep up a perpetual flow of conversation. That's not the least uncharitable, as you'd know if you knew Aunt Lilla. I think she must have been born talking. But I love her all the same."

Trix tilted back her head and looked up at the sky through the branches of the trees.

"I wonder why s.p.a.ce is blue," she said, "and why it's so much bluer some days than others, even when there aren't any clouds."

A step on the terrace behind her put an end to her wondering. Doctor Hilary came round the corner of the house.

"I've taken your invitation for granted, d.u.c.h.essa, as I happened to be out this way," said he as he shook hands.

"Is old Mrs. Mosely still so ill?" asked Trix, sympathy in her voice.

Miss Tibb.u.t.t kept her eyes almost guiltily on her knitting. Pia, glancing at her, laughed inwardly.

"She's better to-day," responded Doctor Hilary cheerfully. And then he sat down. Trix had descended from the table, and seated herself in a basket chair.

Dale brought out the tea in a few minutes, and put it on the table Trix had vacated. The conversation was trivial and desultory, even more trivial and desultory than most tea-time conversation. Miss Tibb.u.t.t was too occupied with Pia's recent revelation to have much thought for speech, Doctor Hilary was never a man of many words, the d.u.c.h.essa had been marvellously lacking in conversation of late, and Trix's occasional remarks were mainly outspoken reflections on the sunshine and the flowers, which required no particular response. Nevertheless she was conscious of a certain flatness in her companions, and wondered vaguely what had caused it.

"I'm going to Llandrindod Wells to-morrow," said she presently.

Doctor Hilary looked up quickly.

"Then your visit here has come to an end?" he queried.

Trix nodded.

"Alas, yes," she sighed, regret, half genuine, half mocking, in her voice. "But most certainly I shall come down again if the d.u.c.h.essa will let me come. I had forgotten, absolutely forgotten, what a perfectly heavenly place this was. And that doesn't in the least mean that I am coming solely for the place, and not to see her, though I am aware it did not sound entirely tactful."

"And when do you suppose you will be coming again?" asked Doctor Hilary with a fine a.s.sumption of carelessness, not in the least lost upon the d.u.c.h.essa.

"Before Christmas I hope," replied she in Trix's stead. "Or, indeed, at any time or moment she chooses."

Doctor Hilary looked thoughtful, grave. A little frown wrinkled between his eyebrows. He pulled silently at his pipe. The d.u.c.h.essa was watching him.

"Alas, poor man!" thought she whimsically. "He was about to seize opportunity, and behold, fate s.n.a.t.c.hes opportunity from him. Oh, cruel fate!"

And then she beheld his brow clearing. He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and began feeling in his pocket for his pouch to refill it.