erhaps pondering. When at last she
spoke, she rose in speaking, as if her answer must put an end to their
encounter, as if he must feel, as well as she, that after her answer
there could be no further question.

"Not altogether, for that," she said; "but, yes, in part it is because
of what you would call an evil in his life that she is cloistered."

Augustine walked with her to the door and down the stone passage
outside, where a strip of faded carpet hardly kept one's feet from the
cold. He was nearer to her in this curious moment of their parting than
he had been at all. He liked Lady Elliston in her last response; it was
not the wish to see justice wreaked that had made it; it was mere truth.

When they had reached the hall door, he opened it for her and in the
fading light he saw that she was very pale. The Grey's dog-cart was
going slowly round and round the gravel drive. Lady Elliston did not
look at him. She stood waiting for the groom to see her.

"What you asked me was asked in confidence," she said; "and what I have
told you is told in confidence."

"It wasn't new to me; I had guessed it," said Augustine. "But your
confirmation of what I guessed is in confidence."

"I have been your father's life-long friend," said Lady Elliston; "He is
not an evil man."

"I understand. I don't misjudge him."

"I don't want to see justice done on him," said Lady Elliston. The groom
had seen her and the dog-cart, with a brisk rattle of wheels, drew up to
the door. "It isn't a question of that; I only want to see justice done
_for_ her."

All through she had been steady; now she was sweet again. "I want to
free her. I want you to free her. And--whenever you do--I shall be
waiting to give her to the world again."

They looked at each other now and Augustine could answer, with another
smile; "You are the world, I suppose."

"Yes; I am the world," she accepted. "The actual fairy-godmother, with a
magic wand that can turn pumpkins into coaches and put Cinderellas into
their proper places."

Augustine had handed her up to her seat beside the groom. He tucked her
rug about her. If he had laid aside anything to meet her on her own
ground, he, too, had regained it now.

"But does the world always know what _is_ the proper place?" was his
final remark as she drove off.

She did not know that she could have found an answer to it.

VII

Amabel was sitting beside her window when her son came in and the face
she