again with searching eyes she examined her friend.
"You don't care at all!" she announced.

"Oh yes, I do," said Margaret.

"You don't care in the least. But I care; and something shall be done.
They have worn you out between them--_two_ invalids; I shall speak to
Mr. Harold."

Margaret's face altered. "No, Garda, you must not do that."

"But he likes me," said Garda, insistently; "he will say yes to anything
I ask--you will see if he doesn't."

And Margaret felt, like a wave, the conviction that he would; more than
this, that he would always have said yes if Garda had been the wife
instead of herself. Garda would never have been submissive, Garda would
never have yielded. But to Garda he would always have said yes.

"I shall certainly speak to him," Garda persisted. "Why shouldn't I not
mind what you say, if it is for your good?'

"It would not be for my good."

"But he is kind to you, I know it, because I see it with my own eyes. He
thinks you are lovely, he has told me so; he says you are a very rare
type. And he himself--he is so agreeable; he says unusual things; he
never tires anybody; his very fish-nets are amusing. I like him ever so
much; and though he is crippled, he is very handsome--there is such a
golden light in his brown eyes."

"He is all that you say," Margaret answered, smiling at this
enumeration.

She could talk about her husband readily enough now. As Garda had
noticed, he was always kind, his manner had been steadily kind (though
not without many a glimpse of inward entertainment gleaming through it)
ever since he entered East Angels' doors; he appeared to have taken his
wife under his protection, he told Aunt Katrina once for all, and
authoritatively (to that lady's amazement), that she must hereafter, in
his presence at least, be "less catty" to Margaret. During the one visit
which Evert Winthrop had paid to Florida in the same period, Lanse
announced to him (in the tone of the old Roman inscription)--"I'm as
steady as a church, old lad. I make nets for the poor. I talk to Aunt K.
I'm good to the little people about here. I'm a seraph to Margaret."

Garda's present visit at East Angels had begun but two days before. She
had been spending some time in New York with Lish-er and Trude. These
ladies having written once a week since their first parting with her,
to say that they were sure that she must by this time be needing "a
drier air," Garda had at length accepted the suggestion; an