f packing and departure followed. By the time she and her
charges left for Windermere, Cicely's hat and high heels had been
entirely blotted out by a quite extraordinary display on her part of
both thoughtfulness and efficiency. Marsworth had seen the same
transformation before, but never so markedly. He tried several times to
make his peace with her; but she held aloof, giving him once or twice an
odd look out of her long almond-shaped eyes.

'Good-bye, and good luck!' said Farrell to Nelly, through the car
window; and as she held out her hand, he stooped and kissed it with a
gulp in his throat. Her deathly pallor and a grey veil thrown back and
tied under her small chin gave her a ghostly loveliness which stamped
itself on his recollection.

'I am going up to town myself to-morrow. I shall come and see if I can
do anything for you.'

'Thank you,' said Nelly mechanically. 'Oh yes, I shall have thought of
many things by then. Good-bye.'

Marsworth and Farrell were left to watch the disappearance of the car
along the moonlit road.

'Poor little soul!' said Farrell--'poor little soul!' He walked on
along the road, his eyes on the ground. Marsworth offered him a cigar,
and they smoked in silence.

'What'll the next message be?' said Farrell, after a little while.
'"Reported wounded and missing--now reported killed"? Most probable!'

Marsworth assented sadly.

CHAPTER VIII

It was a pale September day. In the country, among English woods and
heaths the sun was still strong, and trees and bracken, withered heath,
and reddening berries, burned and sparkled beneath it. But in the dingy
bedroom of a dingy Bloomsbury hotel, with a film of fog over everything
outside, there was no sun to be seen; the plane trees beyond the windows
were nearly leafless; and the dead leaves scudding and whirling along
the dusty, airless streets, under a light wind, gave the last dreary
touch to the scene that Nelly Sarratt was looking at. She was standing
at a window, listlessly staring at some houses opposite, and the
unlovely strip of garden which lay between her and the houses. Bridget
Cookson was sitting at a table a little way behind her, mending some
gloves.

The sisters had been four days in London. For Nelly, life was just
bearable up to five or six o'clock in the evening because of her morning
and afternoon visits to the Enquiry Office in D---- Street, where
everything that brains and pity could suggest was being done