enough."

"That would not have deterred him."

"You're right, it wouldn't. Probably he didn't care even to explain that
he did not intend to be deterred, Lanse was never fond of explanations."

"I am not at all convinced."

"I didn't expect to convince you. You asked me, and I had to say
something."

After breakfast--she could eat nothing--he said, "I have sent for a
little steamer; it is to take me to all the landings within ten miles of
here. I shall not be back until late, probably; don't sit up." He left
the room.

Fifteen minutes later, he appeared again.

"I was waiting for the steamer down by the water, when I saw the boy who
brings the mail going away; you have had a letter?"

She did not answer. Her hands were empty.

"You heard me coming and concealed it."

"I have nothing to conceal." She rose. "Yes, I have had a letter, Lanse
is on his way to New York; he is taking a journey--for a change."

"You will let me see the letter?"

"Impossible." She was trembling a little, but she faced him inflexibly.

"Margaret, I beg you to let me see it. Show me that you trust me; you
seem never to do that--yet I deserve--Tell me, then, of your own accord,
what he says. If he has left you again, who should help you, care for
you, if not I?"

"You last of all!" She walked away. "Of course now that I know, I am no
longer anxious,--I was foolish to be so anxious. We are very much
obliged to you for all you have done."

"Very well, if you take that tone, let me tell you that I too have had
a letter--Primus has just brought it from East Angels--it was sent
there."

She glanced at him over her shoulder with eyes that looked full of
fear--a fear which he did not stop to analyze.

"It is possible that Lanse has written to me even more plainly than he
has to you," he went on. "At any rate, he tells me that he is going to
Italy--it is the old affair revived--and that he has no present
intention of returning. What he has said in his letter to you, of course
I don't know; but it can hardly be the whole, because he asks me to
'break' it to you. 'Break' it,--he has chosen his messenger well!"

"O my God," said Margaret Harold.

Her words were a prayer. She sank down on her knees beside the sofa, and
buried her face in her clasped arms.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Evert Winthrop had felt that her words were a prayer, that she was
praying still.

Against what especial danger she was thus invoking aid, he did not kno