ed. Her tone seemed to carry
the suggestion that by silence she could best protect her daughter's
interests.

"I don't believe you know any more about it than I do," was his
impulsive comment.

"I daresay not," she replied, with indifference. "Probably she didn't
fancy living in so big a house--although heaven knows her ideas are big
enough about most things."

"Did she say so?" Thorpe asked abruptly.

The widow shook her head with dispassionate candour. "She didn't
say anything to me about it, one way or the other. I formed my own
impressions--that's all. It's a free country. Everybody can form their
impressions."

"I wish you'd tell me what you really think," Thorpe urged her, mildly
persuasive. "You know how fond I am of Julia, and how little I want to
do her an injustice."

"Oh, she wouldn't feel THAT way," Louisa observed, vaguely. "If you ask
me plain, I think it was dull for her."

"Well," said Thorpe, upon reflection, "I shouldn't be surprised if it
was. I hadn't thought of that. But still--why she and my wife could be
company for each other."

"You talk as if life was merely a long railway journey," she told him,
in an unexpected flight of metaphor. "Two women cooped up in a lonesome
country house may be a little less lonely than one of them by herself
would be--but not much. It's none of my business--but how your wife must
hate it!"

He laughed easily. "Ah, that's where you're wrong," he said. "She
doesn't care about anything but gardening. That's her hobby. She's crazy
about it. We've laid out more in new greenhouses alone, not counting
the plants, than would rebuild this building. I'm not sure the heating
apparatus wouldn't come to that, alone. And then the plants! What do
you think of six and eight guineas for a single root? Those are the
amaryllises--and if you come to orchids, you can pay hundreds if you
like. Well, that's her passion. That's what she really loves."

"That's what she seizes upon to keep her from just dying of loneliness,"
Louisa retorted, obstinately, and at a sign of dissent from her brother
she went on. "Oh, I know what I'm talking about. I have three or four
customers--ladies in the country, and one of them is a lady of title,
too--and they order gardening books and other books through me, and when
they get up to town, once a year or so, they come here and they talk to
me about it. And there isn't one of them that at the bottom of her heart
doesn't hate it. They'd rather