surely was to
spend the season with them in their villa by the seaside, where among
other advantages Mrs. Ambrose herself would be at hand to--"After all,
Rachel," she broke off, "it's silly to pretend that because there's
twenty years' difference between us we therefore can't talk to each
other like human beings."

"No; because we like each other," said Rachel.

"Yes," Mrs. Ambrose agreed.

That fact, together with other facts, had been made clear by their
twenty minutes' talk, although how they had come to these conclusions
they could not have said.

However they were come by, they were sufficiently serious to send Mrs.
Ambrose a day or two later in search of her brother-in-law. She
found him sitting in his room working, applying a stout blue pencil
authoritatively to bundles of filmy paper. Papers lay to left and to
right of him, there were great envelopes so gorged with papers that they
spilt papers on to the table. Above him hung a photograph of a woman's
head. The need of sitting absolutely still before a Cockney photographer
had given her lips a queer little pucker, and her eyes for the same
reason looked as though she thought the whole situation ridiculous.
Nevertheless it was the head of an individual and interesting woman, who
would no doubt have turned and laughed at Willoughby if she could have
caught his eye; but when he looked up at her he sighed profoundly. In
his mind this work of his, the great factories at Hull which showed like
mountains at night, the ships that crossed the ocean punctually, the
schemes for combining this and that and building up a solid mass of
industry, was all an offering to her; he laid his success at her feet;
and was always thinking how to educate his daughter so that Theresa
might be glad. He was a very ambitious man; and although he had not
been particularly kind to her while she lived, as Helen thought, he now
believed that she watched him from Heaven, and inspired what was good in
him.

Mrs. Ambrose apologised for the interruption, and asked whether she
might speak to him about a plan of hers. Would he consent to leave his
daughter with them when they landed, instead of taking her on up the
Amazons?

"We would take great care of her," she added, "and we should really like
it."

Willoughby looked very grave and carefully laid aside his papers.

"She's a good girl," he said at length. "There is a likeness?"--he
nodded his head at the photograph of Theresa and sighed