h or two----"

"If anything's certain, it's that I shall never go to Blent as long as
my cousin owns it."

"I call it downright wicked."

"We share the crime, she and I. She lays down the law, I willingly
obey."

"Willingly?"

"My reason is convinced. Maybe I'm a little homesick. But your month or
two will serve the purpose there."

"There's a great deal more in this than you're telling me, Mr
Tristram."

"Put everything you can imagine into it, and the result's the same."

She sighed and sat for a moment in pensive silence. Harry seemed to
ponder too.

"I'm going to think of nothing but my work," he announced.

"So many young men in their early twenties succeed in that!" she
murmured mockingly.

"Don't those who succeed in anything succeed in that?"

"Not all, happily--and none would if they were your mother's sons. My
dear boy, just open a window in you anywhere--I know you keep them shut
when you can--but just open even a chink, and Addie peeps out directly!
Which means great success or great failure, Harry--and other things on
the same scale, I fancy. Thank goodness--oh, yes, saving your presence,
really thank goodness--I'm not like that myself!"

"Shall I prove you wrong?"

"I'm safe. I can't live to see it. And you couldn't prove me wrong
without opening all the windows."

"And that I shouldn't do, even to you?"

"Do you ever do it to yourself?"

"Perhaps not," he laughed. "But once a storm blew them all in, Lady
Evenswood, and left me without any screen, and without defences."

"Have another storm then," she counselled. She laid a hand on his arm.
"Go to Blent."

"As things stand, I can never go to Blent, I can go only
to--Blinkhampton."

"What does little Mina Zabriska say to that?"

"Oh, everything that comes into her head, I suppose, and very volubly."

"I like her," said the old lady with emphasis.

"Is there such a thing as an absolute liking, Lady Evenswood? What's
pleasant at one time is abominable at another. And I've known Madame
Zabriska at the other time."

"You were probably at the other time yourself."

"I thought we should agree about the relativity!"

"There may always be a substratum of friendship," she argued. "You'll
say it's sometimes very _sub_! Ah, well, you're human in the end. You're
absolutely forgetting Blent--and you spend your time with an old woman
because she can talk to you about it! Go away and arrange your life, and
come back and tell me all abou