om adjoining the main entrance. It was her day
sanctum--in scholastic days, the matron's sitting-room, a small
apartment, with pretty chintz-covered furniture, and roses in bowls on
the table and bookstands. Margaret unhooked a pair of field-glasses
hanging on the wall, and passed out into the early morning sunlight.

Betty joined her ten minutes later in the stables, and together they
mounted and rode down the long avenue, bordered by firs, out on to the
open wold that commanded a view of the sea.

With the dewy turf under them, they shook their impatient horses into a
canter until they reached the highest point of a bluff promontory that
stretched out into the sea. Here they reined in and scanned the
horizon, side by side.

The water was leaden-coloured, shot with coppery gleams. Below them to
the northward the little harbour of the fishing village was stirring to
life: wisps of smoke, curling from a score of chimneys, blended with
the mists of early morning. Small specks that were people began to
move about an arm of the breakwater, towards which a dinghy came
stealing sluggishly from one of the anchored fishing craft.

Without speaking, Betty abruptly raised her whip and pointed towards
the north. A Torpedo Boat Destroyer was approaching the entrance to
the harbour, her funnels jagged with shot-holes pouring out smoke. In
silence Margaret handed the glasses to her companion. On the far
horizon there were faint columns of smoke north and east. Some were
smudges that dissolved and faded to nothing; others grew darker, and
presently resolved themselves into distant cruisers passing rapidly
south. Margaret's horse lowered his head and began cropping the short
grass.

"Margaret," said Betty suddenly, "did you ever care for anybody--a man,
I mean?" To Betty's mind the thirty-five years that sat so lightly on
Margaret's brow relegated such a possibility, if it ever happened, to a
past infinitely remote. For a moment there was no reply.

Margaret stretched out her hand for the glasses, and focused them on
the horizon.

"Yes," she said at length, quietly. The Destroyer was entering the
harbour; faint confused sounds of cheering drifted up to them.

"Why didn't you marry him? Did you send him away?"

Again a pause, and again came the low-voiced affirmative. Margaret
lowered the glasses and returned them to the case slung across her
shoulder. "I thought I was doing right. . . . But I was wrong." The