"Then she's as big as Rupert—he's nine years old. May she fetch her doll to see Sonora?"
"Certainly—a regiment of dolls, if she wishes."
"Can't she come to-morrow?" asked Rupert, "To-morrow's May's birthday; May's seven years old to-morrow. Mayn't she come?"
"That must be as mamma says."
"Oh, fetch her," cried Lady Thetford, "it will be so nice for May and Rupert. Only I hope little May won't quarrel with her; she does quarrel with her playmates a good deal, I am sorry to say."
"I won't, if she's nice," said May; "it's all their fault. Oh, Rupert! there's Mrs. Weymore on the lawn, and I want her to come and see the rabbits. There's five little rabbits this morning, mamma—mayn't I go and show them to Mrs. Weymore?"
Lady Thetford nodded smiling acquiescence; and away ran little May and Rupert to show the rabbits to the governess.
Colonel Jocyln lingered for half an hour or upwards, conversing with his hostess, and rose to take his leave at last, with the promise of returning on the morrow with his little daughter, and dining at the house. As he mounted his horse and rode homeward, "a haunting shape, an image gay," followed him through the genial May sunshine—Lady Thetford, fair, and stately, and graceful.
"Nine years a widow," he mused. "They say she took her husband's death very hard—and no wonder, considering how he died; but nine years is a tolerable time in which to forget. She received the news of Everard's death very quietly. I don't suppose there ever was anything really in that old story. How handsome she is, and how graceful. I wonder—"
He broke off in his musing fit to light a cigar, and see through the curling smoke dark-eyed Ada, mamma to little Aileen as well as the other two. He had never thought of wanting a wife before, in all the years of his widowhood; but the want struck him forcibly now.