Lunch was a cheerful meal. Generally Lucy was depressed at meals. Some one had to be soothed — either Cecil or Miss Bartlett or a Being not visible to the mortal eye — a Being who whispered to her soul: “It will not last, this cheerfulness. In January you must go to London to entertain the grandchildren of celebrated men.” But to-day she felt she had received a guarantee. Her mother would always sit there, her brother here. The sun, though it had moved a little since the morning, would never be hidden behind the western hills. After luncheon they asked her to play. She had seen Gluck's Armide that year, and played from memory the music of the enchanted garden — the music to which Renaud approaches, beneath the light of an eternal dawn, the music that never gains, never wanes, but ripples for ever like the tideless seas of