ll Cicely's experience of him. His newborn solemnity
was the most marked feature of his demeanour, but sometimes it dissolved
into pathetic demands for sympathy, and then again froze into profound
and lugubrious silence. He said that he was sleeping badly, and the
pallor of his face and the darkness beneath his eyes seemed to confirm
this. Several times he appeared to be on the point of some peculiarly
solemn disclosure of his feelings or his symptoms, but always ended by
upbraiding his fellow guest for her lack of sympathy, and then relapsing
into silence.

Every now and then on such occasions Cicely caught him staring at her
with an expression she had never seen before, and then looking hurriedly
away; a disconcerting habit that made her own lot none the easier. So
far as the observant Bisset could judge, the baronet seemed, indeed, to
be having so depressing an effect upon the young lady that as her friend
and counsellor he took the liberty of advising a change of air.

"We'll miss you vera much, Miss Farmond," he was good enough to say,
"but I'm thinking that what you want is a seaside resort."

She smiled a little sadly.

"I shall have to make a change very soon, Bisset," she said. "Indeed,
perhaps I ought to have let Lady Cromarty know already that I was ready
to go the moment I was sure I could do nothing more for her."

She began her packing on the morning of Simon's visit. At lunch her air
was a little livelier at first, as if even Simon Rattar were a welcome
variety in a regime of undiluted baronet. Sir Malcolm, too, endeavoured
to do the honours with some degree of cheerfulness; but short though the
meal was, both were silent before the end and vaguely depressed
afterwards.

"I can't stand the old fellow's fishy eye!" declared Sir Malcolm. "I'd
as soon lunch with a cod-fish, dash it! Didn't you feel it too, Cicely?"

"He seemed to look at one so uncomfortably," she agreed. "I couldn't
help feeling he had something on his mind against me, though I suppose
he really doesn't trouble his head about my existence."

"I'm hanged if I like the way he looks at me!" muttered the baronet, and
once again Cicely caught that odd expression in his eye.

That afternoon Bisset informed Miss Farmond that her ladyship desired to
see her. Lady Cromarty's face looked thinner than ever and her lips more
tightly compressed. In her deep mourning and with her grave air, she
seemed to Cicely a monumental figure of tragedy.