regarded her.

The great rolling uplands round the city were now covered with vast
camps, and Witanbury every day was full of soldiers; there was not a
family in the Close, and scarce a family in the town, but had more than
one near and dear son, husband, brother, lover, in the New Armies, if
not yet--as in very many cases--already out at the Front.

In spite of what was still described as Rose Otway's "romantic
marriage," Mrs. Otway was regarded as having no connection with the
Army, and her old affection for Germany and the Germans was resented, as
also the outstanding fact that she still retained in her service an
enemy alien.

And, as is almost always the case, there was some ground for this
feeling, for it was true that the mistress of the Trellis House took
very little interest in the course of the great struggle which was
going on in France and in Flanders. She glanced over the paper each
morning, and often a name seen in the casualty lists brought her the
painful task of writing a letter of condolence to some old friend or
acquaintance. But she did not care, as did all the people around her, to
talk about the War. It had brought to her, personally, too much hidden
pain. How surprised her critics would have been had an angel, or some
equally credible witness informed them that of all the women of their
acquaintance there was no one whose life had been more altered or
affected by the War than Mary Otway's!

She was too unhappy to care much what those about her thought of her.
Even so, it did hurt her when she came, slowly, to realise that the
Robeys and Mrs. Haworth, who were after all the most intimate of her
neighbours in the Close, regarded with surprise, and yes, indignation,
what they imagined to be an unpatriotic disinclination on her part to
follow intelligently the march of events.

It took her longer to find out that the continued presence of her good
old Anna at the Trellis House was rousing a certain amount of
disagreeable comment. At first no one had thought it in the least
strange that Anna stayed on with her, but now, occasionally, someone
said a word indicative of surprise that there should be a German woman
living in Witanbury Close.

But what were these foolish, ignorant criticisms but tiny pin-pricks
compared with the hidden wound in her heart? The news for which she
craved was not news of victory from the Front, but news that at last
the negotiations now in progress for the exchange of