ll go and speak to her--only, you know, she
never says a word to me about her trouble, whatever it is. I wonder----"

"Love story, of course," returned Lensky, briefly. "When a woman looks
like that it always _is_ a love story."

"Yes, but--Theo is such a dear! And I know he writes to her."

"Then it isn't Theo. He's not the only man she knows."

Pam frowned thoughtfully. "That's true, but--she _is_ so beautiful."

Lensky smiled at her, and on his strangely white, shrewd, worldly-wise
face the smile looked like a sudden flash of sunlight. "Yes, she _is_
without a doubt very beautiful, but----"

"'But'?"

"I think she is taking her trouble the wrong way. She is bearing it
without grinning, and the grinning is to my mind the greater half."

"But remember what her surroundings at home are, Jack. She had had no
discipline whatever; her mother is horrid----"

Lensky did not answer. Somehow he never cared to hold forth on the
subject of mothers to his wife.

And then, thin, erect, light-footed, Pam went out from the house in
which her strange childhood had been lived, and turning to her left
passed down the dangerously mossy marble steps, and into the olive
grove.

CHAPTER TWO

Lady Brigit Mead was sitting on the hummocky sparse grass under an
ancient olive-tree, looking seawards. She wore a blue frock without any
collar, and her face and long, round neck were very sunburnt. Her face
had hardened in the last four months, and there was a tense look about
her upper lip, yet an artist would have preferred her face as it now was
to what it was before she had become engaged. For now the nervous strain
she was living under had told on her more material beauties, leaving
more room for expression, as it seemed, to the others.

It was not that her face was better, but the suffering in it was less
petty than the resentment that had formerly stamped it.

The dominant characteristic in it had hitherto been disdainful bearing
of small annoyances; now it showed a grim endurance of a great
suffering.

"Bicky, dear," Pam asked suddenly, coming up unheard, "what is it?"

She started. "What is what?"

"Your trouble. Oh, don't tell me if you don't want to, but I can see you
are suffering, and--I used to tell the Duchess, long ago, and it always
did me good."

"Did you tell the Duchess about--Mr. Peele, Pam?"

The elder woman smiled and sighed. "No, my dear, I didn't. But--he was
her son-in-law."

"That wasn't w