peaking to a dog.

Certainly there was, as we said before, an element of canine sympathy in
the silent, solemn, appreciative air with which her companion listened.
He never interrupted. When he spoke, it was to utter a brief ejaculation
or to put a question, a leading question, one which gently turned the
lock a little more on the opening side. Sometimes he merely said,
"Well?"--but how comforting was that "Well"!

"You see Godfrey was so very good to me, and I do miss him so," sighed
the speaker at last.

It was perhaps hardly the way in which a devoted wife would have spoken
of a husband only six weeks dead, but it exactly expressed the truth.
Godfrey Stubbs had never been idealised, but he had been readily
accepted as a lover by a barely emancipated schoolgirl who did not know
what love was; and three serene, unimaginative years had been
contentedly passed under his fostering care.

Had he lived, and had children been born to the pair, it is easy to
conjecture the sort of woman Leonore would have developed into; as it
was, she had grown more mentally and spiritually in the past six weeks
than in the whole course of her previous existence.

And then came the passionate desire for expression, the helpless sense
of an inner burden too heavy to be borne alone. It was lucky it was
Valentine Purcell who came in Leo's way: the dam must have burst
somewhere.

"You won't tell any one, Val?"

"Rather not. I should think not. I should just say not, Leo." Fervour
gathered with each assurance.

"They wouldn't understand, would they?" faltered she.

"Of course they wouldn't. People never do," asseverated he.

"And you mustn't be vexed if I am still shut up when you come to see us,
because I know Sue means this to go on for ever so long. Sue thinks it
only proper, you know. She is not in the least unkind, she believes she
is doing just what I would wish, and she would be awfully ashamed of me
if I wished anything else," continued Leo, jumping across a puddle with
a freer and lighter step than she had come out with, or indeed trod
with, since coming back to the Abbey. "Up the bank, Val. Go first, and
I'll follow. Oh, no, we won't turn back; it is only here that the water
lies; I often come along this path, and it is quite dry directly you are
round the corner."

"You often come here? When? Do you come in the mornings, or
afternoons?"--he threw over his shoulder, still leading the way.

"I don't know. Whenever it's fin