ave been wrought up by something--something quite
unusual with him. You brought it about somehow."

"Yes, I know I did. Do you suppose I haven't thought about that?"

"There's sure to have been a reaction," pursued the sage Imp. "He'll
have got back to his ordinary state of mind, and in that he loved Blent
above everything. And the more he loves Blent, and the sorrier he is for
having given it up, the less he'll like you, of course."

"You think he's sorry?"

"When I've done anything on an impulse like that, I'm always sorry."
Mina spoke from a tolerably large experience of impulses and their
results; a very recent example had been the impulse of temper which made
her drop hints to the Major about Harry's right to be Tristram of Blent.

"Yes, then he would hate me," Cecily concluded. "And how she'd hate me!"
she cried the next instant, pointing at Addie Tristram's picture.

About that at least there was no doubt in Mina's mind. She nodded
emphatically.

"I've done what she spent her life trying to prevent! I've made
everybody talk about her again! Mina, I feel as if I'd thrown mud at
her, as if I'd reviled her. And she can't know how I would have loved
her!"

"I remember her when she thought her husband was dead, and that she
could be married all right to Captain Fitzhubert, and--and that it would
be all right, you know."

"What did she say?" Cecily's eyes were on the picture.

"She cried out--'Think of the difference it makes--the enormous
difference!' I didn't know what she meant then, but I remember how she
looked and how she spoke."

"And in the end there is--no difference! Yes, she'd hate me. And so must
Harry." She turned to Mina. "It's terribly unfair, isn't it, terribly?
She'd have liked me, I think, and I'd got to be such good friends with
him. I'd come to think he'd ask us down now and then--about once a year
perhaps. It would have been something to look forward to all the year.
It would have made life quite different, quite good enough, you know. I
should have been so content and so happy with that. Oh, it's terribly
unfair! Why do people do things that--that bring about things like
this?"

"Poor Lady Tristram," sighed Mina, glancing at the beautiful cause of
the terrible unfairness. "She was like that, you see," she added.

"Yes, I know that. But it oughtn't to count against other people so.
Yes, it's terribly unfair."

These criticisms on the order of the world, whether well-founded or not