would be once more in their possession and
Beaminsters dead and gone be of more importance than Beaminsters alive.

At any rate it was a cold November day, and always now the streets
seemed to echo with newsboys crying out editions.

Even through these stone walls, those cries could penetrate; he could
hear one as he climbed the stairs.

The Duchess, looking peaked and shrivelled, received him with an
eagerness that showed that she was longing for company. The room was
close, but, in spite of that, now and again she shivered a little.

As he sat opposite her the glance that she flung him was almost
pathetic--struggling to maintain her pride, but showing, too, that she
might now, in his company, a little relax that great effort.

"I'm not so well," she said; "I've slept badly."

"I'm sorry for that," he said; "what's the trouble?"

"It's this war," she said, taking her eyes away from his face. "This
war--I don't think I've ever felt anything before, but this--Oh! I'm
old, old at last," she said almost savagely.

"Everybody's feeling it just now," Christopher answered her quietly. "I
suppose I'm as level-headed as most people, but even I have been
imagining things to-day--Nerves, simply nerves----"

"Nonsense," she answered him--"Don't tell _me_, Christopher. What have I
ever had to do with nerves?"

"Wait a little. All we want is to get used to War: it's a new experience
for all of us----"

She laughed sharply--

"It's ludicrous, but really you'd think if you studied my family that I
was responsible for the whole thing. It's positively as though I'd made
some huge blunder which they would do their best to excuse. Adela,
John--I'm now to them an old sick woman who's got to be kept quiet and
away from worry. They wouldn't have _dared_ let me see that six months
ago--"

Her voice was trembling.

She went on again, more quietly. "Every hour now one hears some horrible
thing. This morning that young Dick Staveling dead, shot in some
skirmish or another--Fine boy he was. They're all going out, one after
the other--Not useless idiots who aren't wanted here like John or
Vincent--but boys, boys like--like Roddy."

Again her voice trembled.

For the first time in his knowledge of her some pity for her stirred in
him, for the first time in her knowledge of him she definitely looked to
him with some appeal.

"Roddy came to see me yesterday," she said.

"Yes?" said Christopher.

"He had not been so often as h