rawn--shutting in the warmth and brightness of the house from that
wind-swept frozen twilight through which Bessy rode alone. But the icy
touch of the thought slipped from Justine's mind as she bent above the
tea-tray, gravely measuring Cicely's milk into a "grown-up" teacup,
hearing the confidential details of the child's day, and capping them
with banter and fantastic narrative.

She was not sorry to go--ah, no! The house had become a prison to her,
with ghosts walking its dreary floors. But to lose Cicely would be
bitter--she had not felt how bitter till the child pressed against her
in the firelight, insisting raptly, with little sharp elbows stabbing
her knee: "And _then_ what happened, Justine?"

The door opened, and some one came in to look at the fire. Justine,
through the mazes of her fairy-tale, was dimly conscious that it was
Knowles, and not one of the footmen...the proud Knowles, who never
mended the fires himself.... As he passed out again, hovering slowly
down the long room, she rose, leaving Cicely on the hearth-rug, and
followed him to the door.

"Has Mrs. Amherst not come in?" she asked, not knowing why she wished to
ask it out of the child's hearing.

"No, miss. I looked in myself to see--thinking she might have come by
the side-door."

"She may have gone to her sitting-room."

"She's not upstairs."

They both paused. Then Justine said: "What horse was she riding?"

"Impulse, Miss." The butler looked at his large responsible watch. "It's
not late--" he said, more to himself than to her.

"No. Has she been riding Impulse lately?"

"No, Miss. Not since that day the mare nearly had her off. I understood
Mr. Amherst did not wish it."

Justine went back to Cicely and the fairy-tale.--As she took up the
thread of the Princess's adventures, she asked herself why she had ever
had any hope of helping Bessy. The seeds of disaster were in the poor
creature's soul.... Even when she appeared to be moved, lifted out of
herself, her escaping impulses were always dragged back to the magnetic
centre of hard distrust and resistance that sometimes forms the core of
soft-fibred natures. As she had answered her husband's previous appeal
by her flight to the woman he disliked, so she answered this one by
riding the horse he feared.... Justine's last illusions crumbled. The
distance between two such natures was unspannable. Amherst had done well
to remain away...and with a tidal rush her sympathies swept back t