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74 with rapidity where doubt did not enter into her decisions. But here doubt had entered. Both needed longer probation. She therefore resisted the attempt to hurry on the one irrevocable act, which both might ultimately deplore. She saw how eager he was that a definite time for the marriage should be fixed. She saw that her aunt, and consequently her uncle, would urge on her a speedy decision in the matter. But no—she would not be driven. And so nothing further was said upon the subject that day or the next.

In the morning Uncle William departed, with injunctions on Mrs. Shaw's part to write to her daily, and to be sure and wire if he found he could return sooner than he expected. The parrot from the open drawing-room window invited him to "keep stirring," which excited his mistress's mirth as much as if she had never heard that culinary injunction from the bird's mouth before. Elizabeth kissed her uncle and bade him good-bye, with a strange foreboding, which she remembered long afterwards.

It was the first very hot day that summer, and the three who were left at Farley spent it entirely out-of-doors, lying on rugs and cushions under the beech trees in the morning, and strolling down to the river later, where Wybrowe fished, while the ladies made tea upon the bank. It was not the sort of day that spurs talk; even Mrs. Shaw was somnolent, and the fisherman naturally flogged the stream in silence. Elizabeth did not feel drowsy, but she was glad of the perfect stillness, as they lay under the slanting shadows of the trees at sundown. How pretty her aunt looked in her white