ll those dark corridors and that staircase in my wild
desire to talk to a living person. I had arrived at that stage where all
your ancestors gibbered at the foot of my bed. Flora has been sleeping
with me, but your mother wanted her to-night, and I am deserted."

"What a lot of babies you are!" Gwynne was delighted to wreak his
self-contempt on some one else, but glad of the interruption, and
unexpectedly mellowed by the sight of a pretty woman after the red noses
and sable plumage of the past week. It was true that he had seen Isabel
at dinner, but like Flora she had worn a black gown out of respect to
the family woe, and he hated the sight of black.

Now she wore a gown of soft white wool fastened at the throat and waist
with a blue ribbon; and even her profile, whose severity he had
disapproved, having a masculine weakness for pugs, was softened by the
absence of the coils or braids that commonly framed it: her hair hung in
one tremendous plait to the heels of her slippers.

"I see that you have no more sleep in you than I have," he said. "Let us
make a night of it."

It had rained all day and he was suddenly alive to a sense of physical
discomfort. He rang and ordered a servant to make a fire and bring the
tea-service.

"How did you know I was here?" he asked Isabel, when they were alone
again.

"I felt that you were, but I went first to your room and tapped. I was
quite capable of waking you up. Thank heaven I summoned the courage to
come down. This is delightful."

The fire was crackling in the grate, the water boiling in the big silver
kettle. Isabel made his tea almost black, but diluted her own, lest she
should be left alone before she too was ready for sleep.

"You have had a beastly time these last days," he said, for he was
genuinely hospitable. "I am sorry you did not happen to come a month
earlier. Have you seen anything of Hexam? He was going on to Arcot."

"He rode over, or walked over, every day. We should have fallen a prey
to melancholy without him, although you may believe me when I assure you
that we thought more of you than we did of ourselves. I am your own
blood-relation, so I have a right to feel dreadfully sympathetic--may I
have a cigarette?"

"What a brick you are to smoke! I don't mind being sympathized with for
a change. I have had to do so much sympathizing with others in the last
week that I have not had time to pity myself. Even my mother went to
pieces, for she was fond of