'Now will you tell me, please, about those timber proposals?
I hope to get a few words with the Squire to-night.' And leaning back in her chair, she listened intently while Captain Dell, bringing a roll of papers out of his pocket, read her the draft proposals of a well-known firm of timber merchants, for the purchase of some of the Squire's outlying woods of oak and beech.
Lights had been brought in, and Elizabeth sat shading her eyes from the lamp before her,--a strong and yet agreeable figure.

Was it the consciousness of successful work--of opening horizons, and satisfied ambitions, that had made a physical presence, always attractive, so much more attractive than before--that had given it a magnetism and fire it had never yet possessed?
Pamela, who was developing fast, and was acutely conscious of Elizabeth, asked herself the question, or something like it, about once a week.

And during a short Christmas visit that Elizabeth had paid her own people, her gentle mother, much puzzled and a little dazzled by her daughter, had necessarily pondered the why and wherefore of a change she felt, but could not analyse.

One thing the mother's insight had been clear about.

Elizabeth was not in love.