look after you. Am I right, Mr. Ingram, or am I wrong?"

Ingram paused for a moment, and said, "I have not the same courage that
you have, Mrs. Lavender. I dare not advise Sheila one way or the other
just at present. But if she feels in her own heart that she would rather
return now to her husband, I can safely say that she would find him
deeply grateful to her, and that he would try to do everything that she
desired. That I know. He wants to see you, Sheila, if only for five
minutes, to beg your forgiveness."

"I cannot see him," she said with the same sad and settled air.

"I am not to tell him where you are?"

"Oh no!" she cried with a sudden and startled emphasis. "You must not do
that, Mr. Ingram. Promise me you will not do that?"

"I do promise you; but you put a painful duty on me, Sheila, for you
know how he will believe that a short interview with you would put
everything right, and he will look on me as preventing that."

"Do you think a short interview at present would put everything right?"
she said, suddenly looking up and regarding him with her clear and
steadfast eyes.

He dared not answer. He felt in his inmost heart that it would not.

"Ah, well," said Mrs. Lavender, "young people have much satisfaction in
being proud: when they come to my age, they may find they would have
been happier if they had been less disdainful."

"It is not disdain, Mrs. Lavender," said Sheila gently.

"Whatever it is," said the old woman, "I must remind you two people that
I am an invalid. Go away and have luncheon: Paterson will look after
you. Mr. Ingram, give me that book, that I may read myself into a nap,
and don't forget what I expect of you."

Ingram suddenly remembered. He and Sheila and Mairi sat down to luncheon
in the dining-room, and while he strove to get them to talk about Borva
he was thinking all the time of the extraordinary position he was
expected to assume toward Sheila. Not only was he to be the repository
of the secret of her place of residence, and the message-carrier between
herself and her husband, but he was also to take Mrs. Lavender's
fortune, in the event of her dying, and hold it in trust for the young
wife. Surely this old woman, with her suspicious ways and her worldly
wisdom, would not be so foolish as to hand him over all her property,
free of conditions, on the simple understanding that when he chose he
could give what he chose to Sheila? And yet that was what she had vowed
she wo