like a benediction after the
prolonged rigour of the frost. The lengthening evenings were wrapped in
pearly mystery, through which the soft rain fell in showers of blessing
upon the waiting earth. To Anne, it was as though a great peace had
descended upon all things, quelling all tumult. She had resolutely taken
up her new burden, which was so infinitely easier than the old, and she
found a strange happiness in the bearing of it. The management of her
husband's estate kept her very fully occupied, so that she had no time
for perplexing problems. She took each day as it came, and each day left
her stronger.

Once only had she been to Baronmead since the masquerade on the ice. It
was in fulfilment of her promise to Nap, but she had not seen him; and as
the weeks slipped by she began to wonder at his prolonged silence. For
no word of any sort reached her from him. He seemed to have forgotten her
very existence. That he was well again she knew from Lucas, who often
came over in the motor with his mother.

As his brother had predicted he had made a rapid recovery; but no sooner
was he well than he was gone with a suddenness that surprised no one but
Anne. She concluded that his family knew where he was to be found, but no
news of his whereabouts reached her. Nap was the one subject upon which
neither Mrs. Errol nor her elder son ever expanded, and for some nameless
reason Anne shrank from asking any questions regarding him. She was
convinced that he would return sooner or later. She was convinced that,
whatever appearances might be, he had not relinquished the bond of
friendship that linked them. She did not understand him. She believed him
to be headlong and fiercely passionate, but beneath all there seemed to
her to be a certain stability, a tenacity of purpose, that no
circumstance, however tragic, could thwart. She knew, deep in the heart
of her she knew, that he would come back.

She would not spend much thought upon him in those days. Something
stood ever in the path of thought. Invariably she encountered it, and
as invariably she turned aside, counting her new peace as too precious
to hazard.

Meanwhile she went her quiet way, sometimes aided by Lucas, but more
often settling her affairs alone, neither attempting nor desiring to
look into the future.

The news of Sir Giles's illness spread rapidly through the neighbourhood,
and people began to be very kind to her. She knew no one intimately. Her
husband's churli