d now it seemed that it was Lucia that was always having headaches.
He had, in fact, begun to entertain the very gravest anxiety about her
health. Her face and figure had grown thin; they were becoming less
and less like the face and figure of the ideal spouse. Poor Lucia's
arms offered no reliable support for a tired man.

To his annoyance Jewdwine found that he had to breakfast alone with
his hostess, because of Lucia's headache.

"Lucia doesn't seem very strong," he said to Kitty, sternly, as if it
had been Kitty's fault. "Don't you see it?"

"I have seen it for some considerable time."

"She wants rousing."

And Jewdwine, who was himself feeling the need of exercise, roused her
by taking her for a walk up Harcombe Hill. Half-way up she turned a
white face to him, smiling sweetly, sat down on the hillside, and
bent her head upon her knees. He sat beside her and waited for her
recovery with punctilious patience. His face wore an expression of
agonized concern. But she could see that the concern was not there
altogether on her account.

"Don't be frightened, Horace, you won't have to carry me home."

He helped her to her feet, not ungently, and was very considerate in
accommodating his pace to hers, and in reassuring her when she
apologized for having spoilt his morning. And then it was that she
thought of Keith Rickman, of his gentleness and his innumerable acts
of kindness and of care; and she said to herself, "_He_ would not be
impatient with me if I were ill."

She rested in her room that afternoon and Kitty sat with her. Kitty
could not stand, she said, more than a certain amount of Horace
Jewdwine.

"Lucia," she asked suddenly, "if Horace Jewdwine had asked you to
marry him five years ago, would you have had him?"

"I don't know. I don't really know. He's a good man."

"You mean his morals are irreproachable. It's quite easy to have
irreproachable morals if you have the temperament of an iceberg that
has never broken loose from its Pole. Now I call Keith Rickman a
saint, because he could so easily have been the other thing."

Lucia did not respond; and Kitty left her.

Kitty's question had set her thinking. Would she have married Horace
if he had asked her five years ago? Why not? Between Horace and her
there was the bond of kindred and of caste. He was a scholar; he had,
or he once had, a beautiful mind full of noble thoughts of the kind
she most admired. With Horace she would have felt safe from