py, had offered to give him an old Irish cob upon which he was
riding. It was a silly sort of thing to do really. The horse was worth
from thirty to forty pounds and Edward might have known that the gift
would upset his wife. But Edward just had to comfort that unhappy young
man whose father he had known all his life. And what made it all the
worse was that young Selmes could not afford to keep the horse even.
Edward recollected this, immediately after he had made the offer, and
said quickly:

"Of course I mean that you should stable the horse at Branshaw until you
have time to turn round or want to sell him and get a better."

Nancy went straight home and told all this to Leonora who was lying
down. She regarded it as a splendid instance of Edward's quick
consideration for the feelings and the circumstances of the distressed.
She thought it would cheer Leonora up--because it ought to cheer any
woman up to know that she had such a splendid husband. That was the last
girlish thought she ever had. For Leonora, whose headache had left her
collected but miserably weak, turned upon her bed and uttered words that
were amazing to the girl:

"I wish to God," she said, "that he was your husband, and not mine. We
shall be ruined. We shall be ruined. Am I never to have a chance?" And
suddenly Leonora burst into a passion of tears. She pushed herself up
from the pillows with one elbow and sat there--crying, crying, crying,
with her face hidden in her hands and the tears falling through her
fingers.

The girl flushed, stammered and whimpered as if she had been personally
insulted.

"But if Uncle Edward..." she began.

"That man," said Leonora, with an extraordinary bitterness, "would give
the shirt off his back and off mine--and off yours to any..." She could
not finish the sentence.

At that moment she had been feeling an extraordinary hatred and contempt
for her husband. All the morning and all the afternoon she had been
lying there thinking that Edward and the girl were together--in the
field and hacking it home at dusk. She had been digging her sharp nails
into her palms.

The house had been very silent in the drooping winter weather. And then,
after an eternity of torture, there had invaded it the sound of opening
doors, of the girl's gay voice saying:

"Well, it was only under the mistletoe."... And there was Edward's gruff
undertone. Then Nancy had come in, with feet that had hastened up the
stairs and that tiptoe