ne of the Border regiments--had caused her to
take a special interest in the information, and had perhaps led her to
put a bunch of monthly roses on Mrs. Sarratt's dressing-table. Miss
Cookson hadn't bothered herself about flowers. That she might have
done!--instead of fussing over things that didn't concern her--just for
the sake of ordering people about.

When the little red-haired maid had left the room, the lady she disliked
returned to the window, and stood there absorbed in reflections that
were not gay, to judge from the furrowed brow and pinched lips that
accompanied them. Bridget Cookson was about thirty; not precisely
handsome, but at the same time, not ill-looking. Her eyes were large and
striking, and she had masses of dark hair, tightly coiled about her head
as though its owner felt it troublesome and in the way. She was thin,
but rather largely built, and her movements were quick and decided. Her
tweed dress was fashionably cut, but severely without small ornament of
any kind.

She looked out upon a beautiful corner of English Lakeland. The house in
which she stood was built on the side of a little river, which, as she
saw it, came flashing and sparkling out of a lake beyond, lying in broad
strips of light and shade amid green surrounding fells. The sun was
slipping low, and would soon have kindled all the lake into a white
fire, in which its islands would have almost disappeared. But, for the
moment, everything was plain:--the sky, full of light, and filmy grey
cloud, the fells with their mingling of wood and purple crag, the
shallow reach of the river beyond the garden, with a little family of
wild duck floating upon it, and just below her a vivid splash of colour,
a mass of rhododendron in bloom, setting its rose-pink challenge against
the cool greys and greens of the fell.

But Bridget Cookson was not admiring the view. It was not new to her,
and moreover she was not in love with Westmorland at all; and why Nelly
should have chosen this particular spot, to live in, while George was at
the war, she did not understand. She believed there was some sentimental
reason. They had first seen him in the Lakes--just before the war--when
they two girls and their father were staying actually in this very
lodging-house. But sentimental reasons are nothing.

Well, the thing was done. Nelly was married, and in another week, George
would be at the front. Perhaps in a fortnight's time she would be a
widow. Such thi