art-breaking episodes, and then now and again something so splendid
and happy! A girl came to them a fortnight ago in dreadful trouble,
every one round her saying her lover had been killed at Mons, though she
herself hoped against hope. Well, only yesterday morning they were able
to wire to her that he was safe and well, being kindly treated too, in a
fortress, far away, close to the borders of Prussia and Poland! Wasn't
that splendid?"

"What is the address of the place," asked Mrs. Otway in a low tone,
"where Mrs. Vereker works?"

"It's in Arlington Street--No. 20, I think."

* * * * *

Mrs. Otway hastened on, her heart filled with a new, eager hope. Oh, if
she could only go up now, this evening, to London! Then she might be at
20, Arlington Street, the first thing in the morning.

Alas, she knew that this was not possible; every hour of the next
morning was filled up.

There was no one to whom she could delegate her morning round among
those soldiers' mothers and wives with whom she now felt in such close
touch and sympathy. But she might possibly escape the afternoon
committee meeting, at which she was due, if Miss Forsyth would only let
her off. The ladies of Witanbury were very much under the bondage of
Miss Forsyth, and subject to her will; none more so than the
good-tempered, yielding Mary Otway.

Unluckily one of those absurd little difficulties which are always
cropping up at committees was on the agenda for to-morrow afternoon, and
Miss Forsyth was counting on her help to quell a certain troublesome
person. Still, she might go now, on her way home, and see if Miss
Forsyth would relent.

Miss Forsyth lived in a beautiful old house which, though its approach
was in a narrow street, yet directly overlooked at the back the great
green lawns surrounding the cathedral.

The house had been left to her many years ago, but she had never done
anything to it. Unaffected by the many artistic and other crazes which
had swept over the country since then, it remained a strange mixture of
beauty and ugliness. Miss Forsyth loved the beauty of her house, and she
put up with what ugliness there was because of the major part of her
income, which was not very large, had to be spent, according to her
theory of life, on those less fortunate than herself.

At the present moment all her best rooms, those rooms which overlooked
her beloved cathedral, had been given up by her to a rather
fret