after her in wonder as she ran up-stairs.

"She must be ill indeed!" he murmured thoughtfully to himself, as he
wended his way to his wife's boudoir, to make his report to Flossy.

Meanwhile Enid's progress up-stairs was barred for a moment by her
little playmate and scholar, Dick, who ran out of his nursery to greet
her with a cry of joy. To his surprise and mortification, cousin Enid
did not stop to kiss him--did not even give him a pleasant word or
smile. With a stifled cry she disengaged her frock from his hand,
breaking from him as she had broken from the General just before, and
sped away to her own room. He heard her turn the key in her door, and,
for the first time realising the enormity of the woe that had come upon
him--the unprecedented fact that cousin Enid had been unkind--he lifted
up his voice and bursted into a storm of sobs, which would at any
ordinary time have brought her instantly to his side to comfort and
caress.

But this time Enid either did not hear or did not heed. She was
crouching down by the side of her bed, with her face hidden in the
coverlet, and her hands pressed over her ears, as if to exclude all
sound of the world without; and between the difficult passionate sobs by
which her whole frame was shaken, one phrase escaped from her lips from
time to time--a phrase which would have been unintelligible enough to an
ordinary hearer, but would have recalled a long and shameful story to
the minds of Florence Vane and one other woman in the world.

"Sabina Meldreth's child!" she muttered to herself not knowing what she
said. "How can I bear it? Oh, my poor uncle! Sabina Meldreth's child!"

CHAPTER XIX.

Hubert Lepel had promised to spend Christmas Day at Beechfield, but for
some unexplained reason he stayed away, sending at the last moment a
telegram which his sister felt to be unsatisfactory. Flossy did not
often exert herself to obtain a guest; but on this occasion she wrote a
rather reproachful letter to her brother, and begged him not to fail to
visit them on New Year's eve. "The General was disappointed," she wrote,
"and so was someone else." Hubert thought that she meant herself, felt a
thrill of wondering compassion, and duly presented himself at the Hall
on the thirty-first of December.

He saw Flossy alone in her luxurious boudoir before anyone else knew of
his arrival. He thought her looking ill and haggard, and asked after her
health. To his surprise, the question made