Chapter 10

'Is she out?'

The questioner was William Farrell, and the question was addressed to his cousin Hester, whom he had found sitting in the little upstairs drawing-room of the Rydal lodgings, partly knitting, but mostly thinking, to judge from her slowly moving needles, and her absent eyes fixed upon the garden outside the open window.

'She has gone down to the lake--it is good for her to be alone a bit.'

'You brought her up from Torquay?'

'I did. We slept in London, and arrived yesterday. Miss Cookson comes this evening.'

'Why doesn't she keep away?' said Farrell, impatiently.

He took a seat opposite his cousin. He was in riding-dress, and looked in splendid case. From his boyhood he had always been coupled in Hester's mind with the Biblical words--'ruddy and of a cheerful countenance'; and as he sat there flushed with air and exercise, they fitted him even better than usual. Yet there was modern subtlety too in his restless eyes, and mouth alternately sensitive and ironic.

Hester's needles began to ply a little faster. A spring wind came through the window, and stirred her grey hair.

'How did she get over it yesterday?' Farrell presently asked.

'Well, of course it was hard,' said Hester, quietly. 'I let her alone, poor child, and I told Mrs. Weston not to bother her. She came up to these rooms and shut herself up a little. I went over to my own cottage, and came back for supper. Then she had got it over--and I just kissed her and said nothing. It was much best.'

'Do you think she gives up hope?'

Hester shook her head.

'Not the least. You can see that.'

'What do you mean?'

'When she gives up hope, she will put on a black dress.'

Farrell gave an impatient sigh.

'You know there can't be the smallest doubt that Sarratt is dead! He died in some German hospital, and the news has never come through.'

'The Red Cross people at Geneva declare that if he had died in hospital they would know. The identification disks are returned to them--so they say--with remarkable care.'

'Well then, he died on the field, and the Germans buried him.'

'In which case the poor soul will know nothing--ever,' said Hester sadly. 'But, of course, she believes he is a prisoner.'

'My dear Hester, if he were, we should certainly have heard! Enquiries are now much more thorough, and the results much more accurate, than they were a year ago.'

'Loss of memory?--shell-shock?' said Hester vaguely.

'They don't do away with your disk, and your regimental marks, etc. Whatever may happen to a private, an officer doesn't slip through and vanish like this, if he is still alive. The thing is perfectly clear.'

Hester shook her head without speaking. She was just as thoroughly convinced as Farrell that Nelly was a widow; but she did not see how anybody could proclaim it before Nelly did.

'I wonder how long it will take to convince her,' said Farrell, after a pause.

'Well, I suppose when peace comes, if there's no news then, she will have to give it up. By the way, when may one--legally--presume that one's husband is dead?' asked Hester, suddenly lifting her shrewd grey eyes to the face of her visitor.

'It used to be seven years. But I believe now you can go to the Courts--'

'If a woman wants to re-marry? Well that, of course, Nelly Sarratt will never do!'

'My dear Hester, what nonsense!' said Farrell, vehemently. 'Of course she'll marry again. What is she?--twenty-one? It would be a sin and a shame.'

'I only meant she would never take any steps of her own will to separate herself from Sarratt.'

'Women look at things far too sentimentally!' exclaimed Farrell, 'and they just spoil their lives. However, neither you nor I can prophesy anything. Time works wonders; and if he didn't, we should all be wrecks and lunatics!'

Hester said nothing. She was conscious of suppressed excitement in the man before her. Farrell watched her knitting fingers for a little, and then remarked:--

'But of course at present what has to be done, is to improve her health, and distract her thoughts.'

Hester's eyes lifted again.

'And _you_ want to take it in hand?'

Her emphasis on the pronoun was rather sharp. Farrell's fair though sunburnt skin shewed a sudden redness.

'Yes, I do. Why shouldn't I?' His look met hers full.

'She's very lonely--very unprotected,' said Hester, slowly.

'You mean, you can't trust me?' he said, flushing deeper.

'No, Willy--no!' Hester's earnest, perplexed look appeased his rising anger. 'But it's a very difficult position, you must see for yourself. Ever since George Sarratt disappeared, you've been--what shall I say?--the poor child's earthly Providence. Her illness--her convalescence--you've done everything--you've provided everything--'

'With her sister's consent, remember!--and I promised Sarratt to look after them!'

Farrell's blue eyes were now bright and stubborn. Hester realised him as ready for an argument which both he and she had long foreseen. She and Farrell had always been rather intimate friends, and he had come to her for advice in some very critical moments of his life.

'Her sister!' repeated Hester, contemptuously. 'Yes, indeed, Bridget Cookson--in my opinion--is a great deal too ready to accept everything you do! But Nelly has fought it again and again. Only, in her weakness, with you on one side--and Bridget on the other--what could she do?'

She had taken the plunge now. Her own colour had risen--her hand shook a little on her needles. And she had clearly roused some strong emotion in Farrell. After a few moments' silence, he fell upon her, speaking rather huskily.

'You mean I have taken advantage of her?'

'I don't mean anything of the kind!' Hester's tone shewed her distress. 'I know that all you have done has been out of pure friendship and goodness--

He stopped her.

'Don't go on!' he said roughly. 'Whatever I am, I'm not a hypocrite. I worship the ground she treads on!'

There was silence. Hester bent again over her work. The thoughts of both flew back over the preceding six months. Nelly's utter collapse after five or six weeks in London, when the closest enquiries, backed by Farrell's intelligence, influence and money--he had himself sent out a special agent to Geneva--had failed to reveal the slightest trace of George Sarratt; her illness, pneumonia, the result of a slight chill affecting a general physical state depressed by grief and sleeplessness; her long and tedious convalescence; and that pitiful dumbness and inertia from which she had only just begun to emerge. Hester was thinking too of the nurses, the doctors, the lodgings at Torquay, the motor, the endless flowers and books!--all provided, practically, by Farrell, aided and abetted by Bridget's readiness--a discreditable readiness, in the eyes of a person of such Spartan standards as Hester Martin--to avail herself to any extent of other people's money. The patient was not to blame. Even in the worst times of her illness, Nelly had shewn signs of distress and revolt. But Bridget, instructed by Farrell, had talked vaguely of 'a loan from a friend'; and Nelly had been too ill, too physically weak, to urge enquiry further.

Seeing that he was to blame, Farrell broke in upon Hester's recollections.

'You know very well'--he said vehemently--'that if anything less had been done for her, she would have died!'

Would she? It was the lavishness and costliness of Farrell's giving which had shocked Hester's sense of delicacy, and had given rise--she was certain--to gossip among the Farrell friends and kindred that could easily have been avoided. She looked at her companion steadily.

'Suppose we grant it, Willy. But now she's convalescent, she's going to get strong. Let her live her own life. You can't marry her--and'--she added it deliberately--'she is as much in love with her poor George as she ever was!'

Farrell moved restlessly in his chair. She saw him wince--and she had intended the blow.

'I can't marry her--yet--perhaps for years. But why can't I be her friend? Why can't I share with her the things that give me pleasure--books--art--and all the rest? Why should you condemn me to see her living on a pittance, with nobody but a sister who is as hard as nails to look after her?--lonely, and unhappy, and dull--when I know that I could help her, turn her mind away from her trouble--make her take some pleasure in life again? You talk, Hester, as though we had a dozen lives to play with, instead of this one rickety business!'

His resentment grew with the expression of it. But Hester met him unflinchingly.

'I'm anxious--because human nature is human nature--and risk is risk,' she said slowly.

He bent forward, his hands on his knees.

'I swear to you I will be honestly her friend! What do you take me for, Hester? You know very well that--I have had my adventures, and they're over. I'm not a boy. I can answer for myself.'

'All very well!--but suppose--_suppose_--before she felt herself free--and against her conscience--_she_ were to fall in love with _you_?'

Farrell could not conceal the flash that the mere words, reluctantly as they were spoken, sent through his blue eyes. He laughed.

'Well--you're there! Act watch-dog as much as you please. Besides--we all know--you have just said so--that she does not believe in Sarratt's death, that she feels herself still his wife, and not his widow. That fact establishes the relation between her and me. And if the outlook changes--'

His voice dropped to a note of pleading--

'Let me, Hester!--let me!'

'As if I could prevent you!' said Hester, rather bitterly, bending again over her work.

'Yes, you could. You have such influence with her now, that you could banish me entirely if you pleased. A word from you would do it. But it would be hideously cruel of you--and abominally unjust! However, I know your power--over her--and so over me. And so I made up my mind it was no good trying to conceal anything from you. I've told you straight out. I love her--and because I love her--you may be perfectly certain I shall protect her!'

Silence again. Farrell had turned towards the open window. When Hester turned her eyes she saw his handsome profile, his Nibelung's head and beard against the stony side of the fell. A man with unfair advantages, it seemed to her, if he chose to put out his strength;--the looks of a king, a warm heart, a sympathetic charm, felt quite as much by men as by women, and ability which would have distinguished him in any career, if his wealth had not put the drag on industry. But at the moment he was not idle. He was more creditably and fully employed then she had ever known him. His hospital and his pride in it were in fact Nelly Sarratt's best safeguard. Whatever he wished, he could not possibly spend all his time at her feet.

Hester tried one more argument--the conventional.

'Have you ever really asked yourself, Willy, how it will look to the outside world--what people will think? It is all very well to scoff at Mrs. Grundy, but the poor child has no natural guardian. We both agree her sister is no use to her.'

'Let them think!'--he turned to her again with energy--'so long as you and I _know_. Besides--I shan't compromise her in any way. I shall be most careful not to do so.'

'Look at this room!' said Hester drily. She herself surveyed it. Farrell's laugh had a touch of embarrassment.

'Well?--mayn't anyone give things to a sick child? Hush!--here she is!'

He drew further back into the room, and they both watched a little figure in a serge dress crossing the footbridge beyond the garden. Then she came into the garden, and up the sloping lawn, her hat dangling in her hand, and the spring sunshine upon her. Hester thought of the preceding June; of the little bride, with her springing step, and radiant eyes. Nelly, as she was now, seemed to her the typical figure--or rather, one of the two typical figures of the war--the man in action, the woman in bereavement. Sorrow had marked her; bitten into her youth, and blurred it. Yet it had also dignified and refined her. She was no less lovely.

As she approached, she saw them and waved to them. Farrell went to the sitting-room door to meet her, and it seemed both to him and Hester that in spite of her emaciation and her pallor, she brought the spring in with her. She had a bunch of willow catkins and primroses in her hand, and her face, for all its hollow cheeks and temples, shewed just a sparkle of returning health.

It was clear that she was pleased to see Farrell. But her manner of greeting him now was very different from what it had been in the days before her loss. It was much quieter and more assured. His seniority--there were nineteen years between them--his conspicuous place in the world, his knowledge and accomplishment, had evidently ceased to intimidate her. Something had equalised them.

But his kindness could still make her shy.

Half-way across the room, she caught sight of a picture, on an easel, both of which Farrell had brought with him.

'Oh!---' she said, and stopped short, looking from it to him.

He enjoyed her surprise.

'Well? Do you remember admiring it at the cottage? I'm up to the neck in work. I never go there. I thought you and Hester might as well take care of it for a bit.'

Nelly approached it. It was one of the Turner water-colours which glorified the cottage; the most adorable, she thought, of all of them. It shewed a sea of downs, their grassy backs flowing away wave after wave, down to the real sea in the gleaming distance. Between the downs ran a long valley floor--cottages on it, woods and houses, farms and churches, strung on a silver river; under the mingled cloud and sunshine of an April day. It breathed the very soul of England,--of this sacred long-descended land of ours. Sarratt, who had stood beside her when she had first looked at it, had understood it so at once.

'Jolly well worth fighting for--this country! isn't it?' he had said to Farrell over her head, and once or twice afterwards he had spoken to her of the drawing with delight. 'I shall think of it--over there. It'll do one good.'

As she paused before it now, a sob rose in her throat. But she controlled herself quickly. Then something beyond the easel caught her eye--a mass of flowers, freesias, narcissus, tulips, tumbled on a table; then a pile of new books; and finally, a surprising piece of furniture.

'What have you been doing now?' she asked him, wondering, and, as Hester thought, shrinking back a little.

'It's from Cicely'--he said apologetically. 'She made me bring it. She declared she'd sampled the sofa here,--' he pointed to an ancient one in a corner--'and it would disgrace a dug-out. It's her affair--don't blame me!'

Nelly looked bewildered.

'But I'm not ill now. I'm getting well.'

'If you only knew what a ghost you look still,' he said vehemently, 'you'd let Cicely have her little plot. This used to stand in my mother's sitting-room. It was bought for her. Cicely had it put to rights.'

As he spoke, he made a hasty mental note that Cicely would have to be coached in her part.

Nelly examined the object. It was a luxurious adjustable couch, covered in flowery chintz, with a reading-desk, and well supplied with the softest cushions.

She laughed, but there was rather a flutter in her laugh.

'It's awfully kind of Cicely. But you know--'

Her eyes turned on Farrell with a sudden insistence. Hester had just left the room, and her distant voice--with other voices--could be heard in the garden.

'--You know you mustn't--all of you--spoil me so, any more. I've got my life to face. You mean it so kindly--but--'

She sank into a chair by the window that Farrell had placed for her, and her aspect struck him painfully. There was so much weakness in it; and yet a touch of fierceness.

'I've got my life to face,' she repeated--'and you mustn't, Sir William--you _mustn't_ let me get too dependent on you--and Cicely--and Hester. Be my friend--my true friend--and help me--'

She bent forward, and her pale lips just breathed the rest--

'Help me--_to endure hardness_! That's what I want--for George's sake--and my own. I must find some work to do. In a few months perhaps I might be able to teach--but there are plenty of things I could do now. I want to be just--neglected a little--treated as a normal person!'

She smiled faintly at him as he stood beside her. He felt himself rebuked--abashed--as though he had been in some sort an intruder on her spiritual freedom; had tried to purchase her dependence by a kindness she did not want. That was not in her mind, he knew. But it was in Hester's. And there was not wanting a certain guilty consciousness in his own.

But he threw it off. Absurdity! She _did_ need his friendship; and he had done what he had done without the shadow of a corrupt motive--_en tout bien, tout honneur_.

It was intolerable to him to think of her as poor and resourceless--left to that disagreeable sister and her own melancholy thoughts. Still the first need of all was that she should trust him--as a good friend, who had slipped by force of circumstances into a kind of guardian's position. Accordingly he applied himself to the kind of persuasion that befits seniority and experience. She had asked to be treated as a normal person. He proved to her, gently laughing at her, that the claim was preposterous. Ask her doctor!--ask Hester! As for teaching, time enough to talk about that when she had a little flesh on her bones, a little strength in her limbs. She might read, of course; that was what the couch was for. Lying there by the window she might become as learned as she liked, and get strong at the same time. He would keep her stocked with books. The library at Carton was going mouldy for lack of use. And as for her drawing, he had hoped--perhaps--she might some time take a lesson--

Then he saw a little shiver run through her.

'Could I?' she said in a low voice, turning her face away. And he perceived that the bare idea of resuming old pleasures--the pleasures of her happy, her unwidowed time--was still a shock to her.

'I'm sure it would help'--he said, persevering. 'You have a real turn for water-colour. You should cultivate it--you should really. In my belief you might do a great deal better with it than with teaching.'

That roused her. She sat up, her eyes brightening.

'If I _worked_--you really think? And then,' her voice dropped--'if George came back--'

'Exactly,' he said gravely--'it might be of great use. Didn't you wish for something normal to do? Well, here's the chance. I can supply you with endless subjects to copy. There are more in the cottage than you would get through in six months. And I could send you over portfolios of my own studies and _académies_, done at Paris, and in the Slade, which would help you--and sometimes we could take some work out of doors.'

She said nothing, but her sad puzzled eyes, as they wandered over the garden and the lake, shewed that she was considering it.

Then suddenly her expression changed.

'Isn't that Cicely's voice?' She motioned towards the garden.

'I daresay. I sent on the motor to meet her at Windermere. She's been in town for two or three weeks, selling at Red Cross Bazaars and things. And by George!--isn't that Marsworth?'

He sprang up to look, and verified his guess. The tall figure on the lawn with Cicely and Hester was certainly Marsworth. He and Nelly looked at each other, and Nelly smiled.

'You know Cicely and I have become great friends?' she said shyly. 'It's so odd that I should call her Cicely--but she makes me.'

'She treats you nicely?--at last?'

'She's awfully good to me,' said Nelly, with emphasis. 'I used to be so afraid of her.'

'What wrought the miracle?'

But Nelly shook her head, and would not tell.

'I had a letter from Marsworth a week ago,' said Farrell reflecting--'asking how and where we all were. I told him I was tied and bound to Carton--no chance of getting away for ages--but that Cicely had kicked over the traces and gone up to London for a month. Then he sent a post-card to say that he was coming up for a fortnight's treatment, and would go to his old quarters at the Rectory. Ah!--'

He paused, grinning. The same thought occurred to both of them. Marsworth was still suffering very much at times from his neuralgia in the arm, and had a great belief in one of the Carton surgeons, who, with Farrell's aid, had now installed one of the most complete electrical and gymnastic apparatus in the kingdom, at the Carton hospital. Once, during an earlier absence of Cicely's before Christmas, he had suddenly appeared at the Rectory, for ten days' treatment; and now--again! Farrell laughed.

'As for Cicely, you can never count on her for a week together. She got home-sick, and wired to me that she was coming to-night. I forgot all about Marsworth. I expect they met at the station; and quarrelled all the way here. What on earth is Cicely after in that direction! You say you've made friends with her. Do you know?'

Nelly looked conscious.

'I--I guess something,' she said.

'But you mustn't tell?'

She nodded, smiling. Farrell shrugged his shoulders.

'Well, am I to encourage Marsworth--supposing he comes to me for advice--to go and propose to the Rector's granddaughter?'

'Certainly not!' said Nelly, opening a pair of astonished eyes.

'Aha, I've caught you! You've given the show away. But you know'--his tone grew serious--'it's not at all impossible that he may. She torments him too much.'

'He must do nothing of the kind,' said Nelly, with decision.

'Well, you tell him so. I wash my hands of them. I can't fathom either of them. Here they are!'

Voices ascending the stairs announced the party. Cicely came in first; tired and travel-stained, and apparently in the worst of tempers. But she seemed glad to see Nelly Sarratt, whom she kissed, to the astonishment of her Cousin Hester, who was not as yet aware of the new relations between the two. And then, flinging herself into a chair beside Nelly, she declared that she was dead-beat, that the train had been intolerably full of khaki, and that soldiers ought to have trains to themselves.

'Thank your stars, Cicely, that you are allowed to travel at all,' said Farrell. 'No civilian nowadays matters a hap'orth.'

'And then we talk about Prussian Militarism!' cried Cicely. And she went off at score describing the invasion of her compartment at Rugby by a crowd of young officers, whose manners were 'atrocious.'

'What was their crime?' asked Marsworth, quietly. He sat in the background, cigarette in hand, a strong figure, rather harshly drawn, black hair slightly grizzled, a black moustache, civilian clothes. He had filled out since the preceding summer and looked much better in health. But his left arm was still generally in its sling.

'They had every crime!' said Cicely impatiently. 'It isn't worth discriminating.'

Marsworth raised his eyebrows.

'Poor boys!'

Cicely flushed.

'You think, of course, I have no right to criticise anything in khaki!'

'Not at all. Criticism is the salt of life.' His eyes twinkled.

'That I entirely deny!' said Cicely, firmly. She made a fantastic but agreeable figure as she sat near the window in the full golden light of the March evening. Above her black toque there soared a feather which almost touched the ceiling of the low room--a _panache_, nodding defiance; while her short grey skirts shewed her shapely ankles and feet, clothed in grey gaiters and high boots of the very latest perfection.

'What do you deny, Cicely?' asked her brother, absently, conscious always, through all the swaying of talk, of the slight childish form of Nelly Sarratt beneath him, in her deep chair; and of the eyes and mouth, which after the few passing smiles he had struck from them, were veiled again in their habitual sadness. '_Here I and sorrow sit_.' The words ran through his mind, only to be passionately rejected. She was young!--and life was long. Forget she would, and must.

At her brother's question, Cicely merely shrugged her shoulders.

'Your sister was critical,' said Marsworth, laughing,--'and then denies the uses of criticism.'

'As some people employ it!' said Cicely, pointedly.

Marsworth's mouth twitched--but he said nothing.

Then Hester, perceiving that the atmosphere was stormy, started some of the usual subjects that relieve tension; the weather--the possibility of a rush of Easter tourists to the Lakes--the daffodils that were beginning to make beauty in some sheltered places. Marsworth assisted her; while Cicely took a chair beside Nelly, and talked exclusively to her, in a low voice. Presently Hester saw their hands slip together--Cicely's long and vigorous fingers enfolding Nelly's thin ones. How had two such opposites ever come to make friends? The kindly old maid was very conscious of cross currents in the spiritual air, as she chatted to Marsworth. She was keenly aware of Farrell, and could not keep the remembrance of what he had said to her out of her mind. Nelly's face and form, also, as the twilight veiled them, were charged for Hester with pitiful meaning. While at the back of her thoughts there was an expectation, a constant and agitating expectation, of another arrival. Bridget Cookson might be upon them at any moment. To Hester Martin she was rapidly becoming a disquieting and sinister element in this group of people. Yet why, Hester could not really have explained.

The afternoon was rapidly drawing in, and Farrell was just beginning to take out his watch, and talk of starting home, when the usual clatter of wheels and hoofs announced the arrival of the evening coach. Nelly sat up, looking very white and weary.

'I am expecting my sister,' she said to Farrell. 'She has no doubt come by this coach.'

And in a few more minutes, Bridget was in the room, distributing to everybody there the careless staccato greetings which were her way of protecting herself against the world. Her entrance and her manner had always a disintegrating effect upon other human beings; and Bridget had no sooner shaken hands with the Farrells than everybody--save Nelly--was upon their feet and ready to move. One of Bridget's most curious and marked characteristics was an unerring instinct for whatever news might be disagreeable to the company in which she found herself; and on this occasion she brought some bad war news--a German advance at Verdun, with corresponding French losses--and delivered it with the emphasis of one to whom it was not really unwelcome. Cicely, to whom, flourishing her evening paper, she had mainly addressed herself, listened with the haughty and casual air she generally put on for Bridget Cookson. She had succumbed for her own reasons to the charm of Nelly. She was only the more inclined to be rude to Bridget. Accordingly she professed complete incredulity on the subject of the news. 'Invented,'--she supposed--'to sell some halfpenny rag or other. It would all be contradicted to-morrow.' Then when Bridget, smarting under so much scepticism, attempted to support her tale by the testimony of various stale morsels of military gossip, current in a certain pessimist and pacifist household she had been visiting in Manchester, as to the unfavourable situation in France, and the dead certainty of the loss of Verdun; passing glibly on to the 'bad staff work' on the British side, and the 'poor quality of the new officers compared to the old,' etc.--Cicely visibly turned up her nose, and with a few deft, cat-like strokes put a raw provincial in her place. She, Cicely, of course--she made it plain, by a casual hint or two--had just come from the very centre of things; from living on a social diet of nothing less choice than Cabinet Ministers and leading Generals--Bonar Law, Asquith, Curzon, Briand, Lloyd George, Thomas, the great Joffre himself. Bridget began to scowl a little, and had it been anyone else than Cicely Farrell who was thus chastising her, would soon have turned her back upon them. For she was no indiscriminate respecter of persons, and cared nothing at all about rank or social prestige. But from a Farrell she took all things patiently; till Cicely, suddenly discovering that her victim was giving her no sport, called peremptorily to 'Willy' to help her put on her cloak. But Farrell was having some last words with Nelly, and Marsworth came forward--

'Let me--'

'Oh thank you!' said Cicely carelessly, 'I can manage it myself.' And she did not allow him to touch it.

Marsworth retreated, and Hester, who had seen the little incident, whispered indignantly in her cousin's ear--

'Cicely!--you are a wicked little wretch!'

But Cicely only laughed, and her feather made defiant nods and flourishes all the way downstairs.

'Come along Marsworth, my boy,' said Farrell when the good-byes were said, and Hester stood watching their departure, while Cicely chattered from the motor, where she sat wrapped in furs against a rising east wind. 'Outside--or inside?' He pointed to the car.

'Outside, thank you,' said Marsworth, with decision. He promptly took his place beside the chauffeur, and Farrell and his sister were left to each other's company. Farrell had seldom known his companion more cross and provoking than she was during the long motor ride home; and on their arrival at Carton she jumped out of the car, and with barely a nod to Marsworth, vanished into the house.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Nelly had let Hester install her on the Carton couch, and lay there well shawled, beside the window, her delicate face turned to the lake and the mountains. Bridget was unpacking, and Hester was just departing to her own house. Nelly could hardly let her go. For a month now, Hester had been with her at Torquay, while Bridget was pursuing some fresh 'work' in London. And Nelly's desolate heart had found both calm and bracing in Hester's tenderness. For the plain shapeless spinster was one of those rare beings who in the Lampadephoria of life, hand on the Lamp of Love, pure and undefiled, as they received it from men and women, like themselves, now dead.

But Hester went at last, and Nelly was alone. The lake lay steeped in a rich twilight, into which the stars were rising. The purple breast of Silver How across the water breathed of shelter, of rest, of things ineffable. Nelly's eyes were full of tears, and her hands clasped on her breast scarcely kept down the sobbing. There, under the hands, was the letter which George had written to her, the night before he left her. She had been told of its existence within a few days of his disappearance; and though she longed for it, a stubborn instinct had bade her refuse to have it, refuse to open it. 'No!--I was only to open it, if George was dead. And he is not dead!' And as time went on, it had seemed to her for months, as if to open it, would be in some mysterious way to seal his fate. But at last she had sent for it--at last she had read it--with bitter tears.

She would wear no black for him--her lost lover. She told herself to hope still. But she was, in truth, beginning to despair. And into her veins, all unconsciously, as into those of the old brown earth, the tides of youth, the will to live, were slowly, slowly, surging back.