at the
girl would have laid her life at Leonora's feet. Well, she laid
there the offer of her virtue--and her reason. Those were sufficient
instalments of her life. It would today be much better for Nancy Rufford
if she were dead.

Perhaps all these reflections are a nuisance; but they crowd on me. I
will try to tell the story.

You see--when she came back from Nauheim Leonora began to have her
headaches--headaches lasting through whole days, during which she could
speak no word and could bear to hear no sound. And, day after day,
Nancy would sit with her, silent and motionless for hours, steeping
handkerchiefs in vinegar and water, and thinking her own thoughts. It
must have been very bad for her--and her meals alone with Edward must
have been bad for her too--and beastly bad for Edward. Edward, of
course, wavered in his demeanour, What else could he do? At times he
would sit silent and dejected over his untouched food. He would utter
nothing but monosyllables when Nancy spoke to him. Then he was simply
afraid of the girl falling in love with him. At other times he would
take a little wine; pull himself together; attempt to chaff Nancy about
a stake and binder hedge that her mare had checked at, or talk about the
habits of the Chitralis. That was when he was thinking that it was
rough on the poor girl that he should have become a dull companion. He
realized that his talking to her in the park at Nauheim had done her no
harm.

But all that was doing a great deal of harm to Nancy. It gradually
opened her eyes to the fact that Edward was a man with his ups and downs
and not an invariably gay uncle like a nice dog, a trustworthy horse or
a girl friend. She would find him in attitudes of frightful dejection,
sunk into his armchair in the study that was half a gun-room. She would
notice through the open door that his face was the face of an old, dead
man, when he had no one to talk to. Gradually it forced itself upon her
attention that there were profound differences between the pair that she
regarded a her uncle and her aunt. It was a conviction that came very
slowly.

It began with Edward's giving an oldish horse to a young fellow called
Selmes. Selmes' father had been ruined by fraudulent solicitor and the
Selmes family had had to sell their hunters. It was a case that had
excited a good deal of sympathy in that part of the county. And Edward,
meeting the young man one day, unmounted, and seeing him to be very
unhap