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was a March day of glorious windy brightness, and all down the glades of Molesworth, where Bertie and Amelie had sat one hot morning in June last year, innumerable companies of daffodils danced and flickered in the sun. The great trees were yet for the most part bare of leaves, but round the birches a green mist hovered, and the red buds on the limes were ready to burst. Boisterous, but warm and fruitful, and teeming with the promise of the opening year, the wind shouted through the branches, and bowled, as a child bowls a hoop, great fleecy clouds across the blue of the sky. Movement, light, fruitfulness of the warm earth, were all triumphant; the strength of all that lived was renewed; spring was there.

To-day Amelie was pacing alone up and down the glade near the fallen tree-trunk where she had sketched before. She walked briskly, for it was not yet a day to loiter in; and as she came to the end of her beat within sight of the house, she looked eagerly towards it as if expecting someone. But the brilliance of her face and of the smile that every now and then hovered round her lips was in no way diminished when she turned again without seeing him whom she waited for. It seemed she was content to wait, and, though eager, did not fear disappointment.

The grass where she walked was all bright with the springing shoots of young growth, and the daffodils nodded and tossed their heads all round her. Not yet was the full note