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When the tea came he watched her in silent fascination while her hands flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and slender in contrast to the coarse china and lumpy bread It seemed wonderful to him that any one should perfor tea in public in a lurching train He would never have dared to order it for hiers; but, secure in the shelter of her conspicuousness, he sipped the inky draught with a delicious sense of exhilaration

Lily, with the flavour of Selden's caravan tea on her lips, had no great fancy to drown it in the railway brehich see that one of the charether, she proceeded to give the last touch to Mr Gryce's enjoy at hiht--I haven't ?" she asked solicitously; and he replied with conviction that he had never tasted better tea

"I daresay it is true," she reflected; and her iht have sounded the depths of thehis first journey alone with a pretty woman

It struck her as providential that she should be the instruirls would not have kno to e him They would have over-e to make him feel in it the zest of an escapade But Lily's methods were more delicate She remembered that her cousin Jack Stepney had once defined Mr Gryce as the young o out in the rain without his overshoes; and acting on this hint, she resolved to iently domestic air to the scene, in the hope that her co reckless or unusual, woulda companion to make one's tea in the train

But in spite of her efforts, conversation flagged after the tray had been removed, and she was driven to take a fresh measurement of Mr Gryce's liination that he lacked: he had a uish between railway tea and nectar There was, however, one topic she could rely on: one spring that she had only to touch to set his si it because it was a last resource, and she had relied on other arts to stian to creep over his candid features, she saw that extreme measures were necessary