y" in a low voice, and Percival
leant back again.

Harry went. Mrs. Middleton had moved a little farther away, and stood
with her back toward Percival and one hand pressed against the wall to
steady herself. Her first question was an unexpected one: "Isn't the
wind getting up?" Her eyes were frightened and her voice betrayed her
anxiety.

"I don't know--not much, I think." He was taken by surprise, and
hesitated a little.

"It is: tell me the truth."

"I am--I will," he stammered. "I haven't thought about it. There is a
pleasant little breeze, such as often comes in the evening. I don't
really think there's any more."

"It isn't rising, then?"

"Wait a minute," said Hardwicke, and hurried off. He did not in the
least understand his errand, but it was enough for him that Mrs.
Middleton wanted to know. If she had asked him the depth of water in the
well or the number of trees on the Priory farm, he would have rushed
away with the same eagerness to satisfy her. His voice was heard in the
porch, alternating with deeper and less carefully restrained tones. Then
there was a sound of steps on the gravel-path. Presently he came back.
Mrs. Middleton's attitude was unchanged, except that she had drawn a
little closer to the wall. But though she had never looked over her
shoulder, she was uneasily conscious of the young man half sitting, half
lying in the window-seat behind her.

"Greenwell says it won't be anything," Hardwicke announced. "The glass
has been slowly going up all day yesterday and to-day, and it is rising
still. He believes we have got a real change in the weather, and that it
will keep fine for some time."

"Thank God!" said Mrs. Middleton. "Do you think I'm very mad?"

"Not I," Harry answered in a "theirs-not-to-reason-why" manner.

"A week or two ago," she said, "my poor darling was talking about dying,
as you young folks will talk, and she said she hoped she should not die
in the night, when the wind was howling round the house. A bitter winter
night would be worst of all, she said. It won't be _that_ but I fancied
the wind was getting up, and it frightened me to think how one would
hear it moaning in this old place. It is only a fancy, of course, but
she might have thought of it again lying there."

Hardwicke could not have put it into words, but the fancy came to him
too of Sissy's soul flying out into the windy waste of air.

"Of course it is nothing--it is nonsense," said Mrs. Middleton. "But