Presently Boulou, who could do nothing simply, found a dead mouse, where any one else could have found it, in the middle of the path, and made it an occasion for a theatrical display of growlings and shakings. The children decided to bury it, and after a becoming silence their voices could be heard singing "Home, Sweet Home," as the body was being lowered into the grave previously dug by Boulou, who had to be forcibly restrained from going on digging it after the obsequies were over.

"He never knows when to stop," said Regie, wearily, as Boulou, with a little plaster of earth on his nose, was carried coughing back to Hester.

As she took him Rachel and Sybell came slowly down the path towards them, and the latter greeted Hester with an effusion which suggested that when two is not company three may be.

"A most vexing thing has happened," said Sybell, in a gratified tone, sitting down under Hester's tree. "I really don't think I am to blame. You know Mr. Tristram, the charming artist who has been staying with us?"

"I know him," said Hester.

"Well, he was set on making a sketch of me for one of his large pictures, and it was to have been finished to-day. I don't see any harm myself in drawing on Sunday. I know the Gresleys do, and I love the Gresleys, he has such a powerful mind; but one must think for one's self, and it was only the upper lip, so I consented to sit for him at four o'clock. I noticed he seemed a little—well rather—"

"Just so," said Hester.

"The last few days. But, of course, I took no notice of it. A married woman often has to deal with such things without making a fuss about them. Well, I overslept myself, and it was nearly half-past four before I awoke. And when I went into my sitting-room a servant brought me a note. It was from him, saying he had been obliged to leave Wilderleigh suddenly on urgent business, and asking that his baggage might be sent after him."

Hester raised her eyes slightly, as if words failed her. Sybell's conversation always interested her.

"Perhaps the reason she is never told anything," she said to herself, "is because the ground the confidence would cover is invariably built over already by a fiction of her own which it would not please her to see destroyed."

"Who would have thought," continued Sybell, "that he would have behaved in that way because I was one little half-hour late. And of course the pretext of urgent business is too transparent, because there is no Sunday post, and the telegraph-boy had not been up. I asked that. And he was so anxious to finish the sketch. He almost asked to stay over Sunday on purpose."

Rachel and Hester looked on the ground.

"Rachel said he was all right in the garden just before, didn't you, Rachel?"

"I said I thought he was a little nervous."