* * * * *

The day was misty and still. October, the marvellous October of this
year, was marching on. Every day, Foch on the battlefield of France and
Belgium was bringing down the old Europe, and clearing the ground for the
new. In English villages and English farms, no less than in the big
towns, there was ferment and excitement, though it showed but little.
Would the boys be home by Christmas--the sons, the brothers, the
husbands? What would the change be like--the life after the war? If there
were those who yearned and prayed for it--there were those who feared it.
The war had done well for some, and hideously for others. And all through
the play of individual interests and desires, and even in the dullest
minds there ran the intoxicating sense of Victory, of an England greater
and more powerful than even her own sons and daughters had dared to
dream--an England which knew herself now, by the stern test of the four
years' struggle, to be possessed of powers and resources, spiritual,
mental, physical, which amazed herself. In all conscious minds, brooding
on the approaching time, there rose the question: "What are we going to
do with it?" and even in the unconscious, the same thought was present,
as a vague disturbing impulse.

Janet had just read the war telegrams to Rachel, who had come down late,
complaining of a headache; but when Janet--the reserved and equable
Janet--after going through the news of the recapture of Ostend,
Zeebrugge, and Bruges, broke into the passionate, low-spoken comment:
"The Lord is King--be the people never so unquiet!" or could not, for
tears, finish the account of the entry into recaptured Lille, and the joy
of its inhabitants, Rachel sat irresponsive--or apparently so.

How would it affect Ellesborough--this astounding news? Would it take him
from her the sooner, or delay his going? That was all she seemed capable
of feeling.

Janet was troubled by her look and attitude, and being well aware that
the two had had a long _tete-a-tete_ the day before, wondered how things
were going. But she said nothing; and after breakfast Rachel joined the
two girls in the potato-field, and worked as hard as they, hour after
hour. But her usual gaiety was gone, and the girls noticed at once the
dark rims under her eyes. They wondered secretly what Miss Henderson's
"friend" had been doing. For that the "Cap'n" was courting their employer
had long been plain to them.