ll the tender patience and grieved
understanding on the other which are the outcome of a real attachment
between a bond woman and a free one.

The one craved, the other relinquished; the one was consumed with
unrest, the other had reached some inner stronghold of peace. The one
was imprisoned in self, the other was freed, released. The one made
demands, the other was willing to serve. It seems as if only the free
can serve.

"I am very miserable," said Fay suddenly. She was pushed once more by
the same blind impulse that had taken her to her husband's room the
night after Michael's arrest.

She used almost the same words. And as the duke had made no answer then,
so Magdalen made none now. She had not lived in the same house with Fay
for nearly a year for nothing.

Magdalen's silence acted as a goad.

"You think, and father thinks," continued Fay, her voice shaking, "you
are all blinder one than the other, that it's Andrea I'm grieving for.
It's not."

"I know that," said Magdalen. "You never cared much about him. I have
often wondered what it could be that was distressing you so deeply."

Fay winced. Magdalen had noticed something, after all.

"I have sometimes feared,"--continued Magdalen with the deliberation of
one who has long since made up her mind not to speak until the opening
comes, and not to be silent when it does come--"I have sometimes feared
that your heart was locked up in an Italian prison."

"My heart!" said Fay, and her visible astonishment at a not very
astonishing inference was not lost on Magdalen. "My heart!" she laughed
bitterly. "Do you really suppose after all I've suffered, all I've gone
through, that I'm so silly as to be in love with anyone in prison or out
of it? I suppose you mean poor dear Michael. I hate men, and their
selfish, stupid, blundering ways."

Fay had often alluded to the larger sex _en bloc_ as blunderers since
the night she had told Michael to stand behind the screen.

"There are two blunderers coming towards us now," said Magdalen, as the
distant figures of Colonel Bellairs and Wentworth appeared in the beech
avenue.

Both women experienced a distinct sense of relief.

Colonel Bellairs had many qualities as a parent which made him a kind of
forcing-house for the development of virtue in those of his own family.
He was as guano spread over the roots of the patience of others; as a
pruning hook to their selfishness. But he had one great compensating
quality as