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ALICE LAUDER.
107

with the triumphant spirit of the words, and seemed to lend them a more visionary melody:

“There everlasting spring abidesAnd never-withering flowers.”

But the rider was close beside her now, and as he jumped off and came up to her side she had hardly time to put on her armour of self-possession, while he took her hand and said, as if they had only parted a few hours before—

“Ah, here you are at last! I thought I was never going to see you again!”

“Indeed!” said Alice, with the smile she had hurriedly caught up, the first to hand, as it were. “Pray have you been looking for me long?”

“Since eleven o’clock this morning,” he replied in the same tone. “When Mrs. Austin told me you were in Green Street, I thought I should meet you at the garden-party this afternoon.”

“And I thought you were there now.”

“So you wouldn’t come? How horrid of you! But I have been there, and when I had waited for you for a whole hour, and had drunk three cups of tea in my despair with the eldest Miss Granby, I thought I would find out where you were. I called at the house, and your ancient

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