their company to the Zoo again. The children were in paroxysms of delight, and Annette laughed outright at Thorndyke, particularly when he admitted that he had declined an invitation to a breakfast at the Brentwood Baldwins on the ground of a previous engagement in order to carry out this little trip to the Zoo. The trio went off together in great spirits, and Crane and Annette were left alone. Through all the laughing and joking with the children, Crane had sat silent and sombre—they had not yet laughed and joked with him. Suddenly, he proposed a walk to Annette. It was so long since such a thing had occurred that he was embarrassed in giving the invitation, and she in accepting it; but they walked together along the country lanes in the quiet Sunday noon, and a shadow of the old confidence was restored between them. But Crane was still fully convinced that Annette was not cut out for the wife of a public man, and could not shine in cosmopolitan society. He was soon to have an opportunity to judge of her in this last particular.
Constance Maitland had set her mind to work upon that difficult and interesting problem—the
