he had grown into such union with her husband, and had so forgotten
the Rathforlane defence, as to learn that it was pleasanter to do as
he liked than to try to make him like what she did, and a look of
disapproval from him would open her eyes to the flaws in any scheme,
however enchanting at first.

She was too necessary an element in all hospitalities of Cecil or of
Anne not to get quite as much diversion as so thorough a wife and
mother could find time for, since Julia did not remain by any means
an only child, and besides her permanent charge of Terence, relays
of De Lanceys were constantly casting up at the Rectory for
mothering in some form or other.

Cecil depended on her more than on any one else for sympathy, not
expressly in feeling, but in all her pursuits. In three years' time
Sirenwood was in perfect order, the once desolate garden blazed with
ribbons, triangles and pattipans of verbena, scarlet geranium and
calceolaria, with intervals of echiverias, pronounced by Tom to be
like cabbages trying to turn into copper kettles; her foliage plants
got all the prizes at horticultural shows, her poultry were
incomparable at their exhibitions, her cottages were models, her
school machinery perfect, and if a pattern in farming apparatus were
wanted, people went to Mrs. Raymond Poynsett's steward. She had
people of note to stay with her every winter, went to London for the
season, and was made much of, and all the time she looked as little,
and pinched, and weary, and heart-hungered as ever, and never seemed
to thaw or warm, clinging to no one but to Miles for counsel, and to
Rosamond for the fellow-feeling it was not always easy to give--when
it was apparently only about an orchid or a churn--and yet Rosamond
tried, for she knew it was starvation for sympathy.

The Charnock world murmured a little when, after a succession of De
Lancey visitors for four months, the Rectory was invaded by
Rosamond's eldest brother, Lord Ballybrehon, always the most hair-
brained of the family, and now invalided home in consequence of a
concussion of the brain while pigsticking in India. He was but a
year older than Rosamond, and her favourite of all, whose scrapes
she had shared, befriended, defended, and scolded in turn, very
handsome, very lazily daring, droll and mischievous, a sort of
concentration of all the other De Lanceys. His sister loved him
passionately, he fascinated the Rector, and little Julia was the
adorer of Un