. Hope has the right to be proud. Aunt
Alison used to tell me that she made no moan over her wonderful sons.
She shut herself up for a short time, and then faced the world again,
her kindly, sharp-tongued self. She is one of those splendid people who
take the slings and arrows thrown at them by outrageous fortune and bury
them deep in their hearts and go on, still able to laugh, still able to
take an interest. Only, you mustn't speak to her of what she has lost.
That would be too much."

"Yes," said Pamela. "I can understand that."

She stopped for a minute and stood looking at the river full of "wan
water from the Border hills," at the stretches of lawn ornamented here
and there by stone figures, at the trees _thrawn_ with winter and rough
weather, and she thought of the three boys who had played here, who had
lived in the whitewashed house (she could see the barred nursery
windows), bathed and fished in the Tweed, thrown stones at the grey
stone figures on the lawn, climbed the trees in the Hopetoun Woods, and
who had gone out with their happy young lives to lay them down in a far
country.

Mrs. Hope was sitting by the fire in the drawing-room, a room full of
flowers and books, and lit by four long windows. Two of the windows
looked on to the lawns, and the stone figures chipped by generations of
catapult-owning boys; the other two looked across the river into the
Hopetoun Woods. The curtains were not drawn though the lamps were lit,
for Mrs. Hope liked to keep the river and the woods with her as long as
light lasted, so the warm bright room looked warmer and brighter in
contrast with the cold, ruffled water and the wind-shaken trees outside.

Mrs. Hope had been a beautiful woman in her day, and was still an
attractive figure, her white hair dressed high and crowned with a square
of lace tied in quaint fashion under her chin. Her black dress was soft
and becoming to her spare figure. There was nothing unsightly about her
years; she made age seem a lovely, desirable thing. Not that her years
were so very many, but she had lived every minute of them; also she had
given lavishly and unsparingly of her store of sympathy and energy to
others: and she had suffered grievously.

She kissed Jean affectionately, upbraiding her for being long in coming,
and turned eagerly to Pamela. New people still interested her vividly.
Here was a newcomer who promised well.

"Ah, my dear," she said in greeting, "I have wanted to know y