fering animals that are denied expression of their
pain. She had gone off with her load of sorrow and anxiety into the
thicket on the flank of Monsanto, and there Sylvia found her presently,
dejectedly seated by a spring on a bank that was thick with flowering
violets. Her ladyship was in tears, her mind swollen to bursting-point
by the secret which it sought to contain but felt itself certainly
unable to contain much longer.

"Why, Una dear," cried Miss Armytage, kneeling beside her and putting a
motherly arm about that full-grown child, "what is this?"

Her ladyship wept copiously, the springs of her grief gushing forth in
response to that sympathetic touch.

"Oh, my dear, I am so distressed. I shall go mad, I think. I am sure I
have never deserved all this trouble. I have always been considerate
of others. You know I wouldn't give pain to any one. And--and Dick has
always been so thoughtless."

"Dick?" said Miss Armytage, and there was less sympathy in her voice.
"It is Dick you are thinking about at present?"

"Of course. All this trouble has come through Dick. I mean," she
recovered, "that all my troubles began with this affair of Dick's. And
now there is Ned under arrest and to be court-martialled."

"But what has Captain Tremayne to do with Dick?"

"Nothing, of course," her ladyship agreed, with more than usual
self-restraint. "But it's one trouble on another. Oh, it's more than I
can bear."

"I know, my dear, I know," Miss Armytage said soothingly, and her own
voice was not so steady.

"You don't know! How can you? It isn't your brother or your friend. It
isn't as if you cared very much for either of them. If you did, if you
loved Dick or Ned, you might realise what I am suffering."

Miss Armytage's eyes looked straight ahead into the thick green foliage,
and there was an odd smile, half wistful, half scornful, on her lips.

"Yet I have done what I could," she said presently. "I have spoken to
Lord Wellington about them both."

Lady O'Moy checked her tears to look at her companion, and there was
dread in her eyes.

"You have spoken to Lord Wellington?"

"Yes. The opportunity came, and I took it."

"And whatever did you tell him?" She was all a-tremble now, as she
clutched Miss Armytage's hand.

Miss Armytage related what had passed; how she had explained the true
facts of Dick's case to his lordship; how she had protested her faith
that Tremayne was incapable of lying, and that if he said he