rovides distraction to the
mind from the sheer, undiluted pain of separation.

But for Gillian, left behind at Friars' Holm, there remained nothing
but an hourly sense of loss added to that crushing, inevitable flatness
which succeeds a crisis of any kind.

Nor did a forlorn Coppertop's reiterated inquiries as to how soon the
Fairy Lady might be expected back again help to mend matters.

Lady Arabella's grief was expressed in a characteristically prickly
fashion.

"Young people don't seem to know the first thing about love nowadays,"
she observed with the customary scathing contempt of one age for
another.

In _my_ young days! Ah! there will never be times like those again! We
are all quite sure of it as our young days recede into the misty past.

"If you loved, you loved," pursued Lady Arabella crisply. "And the death
of half a dozen sisters wouldn't have been allowed to interfere with the
proceedings."

Gillian smiled a little.

"It wasn't only that. It was Michael's bitter disappointment in Magda,
I think, quite as much as the fact that, indirectly, he held her
responsible for June's death."

"It's ridiculous to try and foist Mrs. Storran's death on to Magda,"
fumed Lady Arabella restively. "If she hadn't the physical health to
have a good, hearty baby successfully, she shouldn't have attempted
it. That's all! . . . And then those two idiots--Magda and Michael! Of
course he must needs shoot off abroad, and equally of course she must
be out of the way in a sisterhood when he comes rushing back--as he will
do!"--with a grim smile.

"He hasn't done yet," Gillian pointed out.

"I give him precisely six months, my dear, before he finds out that,
sister or no sister, he can't live without Magda. Michael Quarrington's
got too much good red blood in his veins to live the life of a
hermit. He's a man, thank goodness, not a mystical dreamer like Hugh
Vallincourt. And he'll come back to his mate as surely as the sun will
rise to-morrow."

"I wish I felt as confident as you do."

"I wish I could make sure of putting my hand on Magda when he comes,"
grumbled Lady Arabella. "That's the hitch I'm afraid of! If only she
hadn't been so precipitate--only waited a bit for him to come back to
her."

"I don't agree with you," rapped out Gillian smartly. "Women are much
too ready to do the patient Griselda stunt. I think"--with a vicious
little nod of her brown head--"it would do Michael all the good in
the world to co