?"

She smiled and shook her head.

"I thought you were such a devoted friend of hers!"

"I always tried to be a true friend to her. But you know I think, Wyvis,
that some people have not got it in their nature to be true friends to
anyone. And perhaps it was not--quite--in Margaret's nature."

"I agree with you," said Wyvis, more gravely than he had spoken
hitherto. "She has not your depth of affection, Janetta--your strength
of will. You have been a very true and loyal friend to those you have
loved."

Janetta turned away her face. Something in his words touched her very
keenly. After a pause, Wyvis spoke again.

"I have had reason since I saw you last to know the value of your
friendship," he said seriously. "I want to speak to you for a moment,
Janetta, before we join the others, about my poor Juliet. I had not, as
you know, very many months with her after we left England. But during
those few months I became aware that she was a different creature from
the woman I had known in earlier days. She showed me that she had a
heart--that she loved me and our boy after all--and died craving my
forgiveness, poor soul (though God knows that I needed hers more than
she needed mine), for the coldness she had often shown me. And she said,
Janetta, that _you_ had taught her what love meant, and she charged me
to tell you that your lessons had not been in vain."

Janetta looked up with swimming eyes. "Poor Juliet! I am glad that she
said that."

"She is at peace now," said Wyvis, in a lower voice, "and the happiness
of her later days is due to you. But how much is not due to you,
Janetta! Your magic power seemed to change my poor wife's very nature:
it has made my child happy: it gave all possible comfort to my mother on
her dying bed--and what it has done for me no words can ever tell! No
one has been to me what you have been, Janetta; the good angel of my
life, always inspiring and encouraging, always ready to give me hope and
strength and courage in my hours of despair."

"You must not say so: I have done nothing," she said, but she let her
hand lie unresistingly between his own, as he took it and pressed it
tenderly.

"Have you not? Then I have been woefully mistaken. And it has come
across me strangely, Janetta, of late, that of all the losses I have
had, one of the greatest is the loss of my kinship with you. No doubt
you have thought of that: John Wyvis, the ploughman's son, is not your
cousin, Wyvis Brand."