‘The best person you could come across would be that tutor of yours--Arbuthnot.’ The Seigneur brought the blood into Marjorie’s cheeks by telling her this, one day. ‘We must conclude that I shall die some time. It is given to few men to draw breath in three centuries. When I am gone you will need a husband more than the Higher Education. I liked Arbuthnot. He was a shallowish classic and over-full of this modern “know-all, know-nothing” spirit. But he was a _man_--so many honest English stone, moral and physical, in him! A good make-weight for a bit of wandering thistle-down like you.’ The speech lingered in Marjorie’s penitent soul. If things had gone differently, then, Old Andros would not have said nay to Geoffrey’s suit! Her own passionate temper, the jealousy that could brook no rival, present or in the past, were alone answerable for love forfeited, for a vista of long years, out of which the sweet fulness of youth, at youth’s best, should be wanting. And blood warm and generous ran in Marjorie’s veins. Her object in visiting Cambridge was, of course, to make personal acquaintance with Girton. Her hopes and fears must be centred on the august ladies who in future days would be her Dons. But the remembrance of her lost sweetheart plucked ever at her heart. If by accident Geoffrey crossed her path, what would be her duty? That was the thing to consider--_duty_. Simply as an old comrade, might she not hold out her hand, seek a final word of explanation? At what nice point should self-respect, a due sense of wounded Bartrand pride, draw the line of unforgiveness? These were not questions she could propound to her Girton coach, a lady of fair exterior, young in years, but who had recently come out well in two Triposes. Cassandra Tighe, with her lowlier range of thought, stood nearer to one, Marjorie felt, her sixty winters notwithstanding, in such trivial human perplexities as belong to love and lovers. In these poor matters, ignorance would seem to possess a spurious wisdom of its own. The higher sciences assist one moderately. And so, on the vigil of her English journey, the girl started away between the lights, alone, and with an overflowing heart, to seek her old friend’s counsel. It was a typical autumn evening of this mid-channel region. A north-west wind shivered and sobbed among the poplars that hedged the entrance way of Cassandra’s domain. The garden dahlias drooped their heads, the chrysanthemums with their thin, half-bitter odour, showed wan and ghostly in the thickening dusk. An irresistible sense of decay was conveyed by the fitful rustle of the falling leaves. The surrounding fields and copses were shrouded in vague mist. Loss and uncertainty ... these seemed the dominant notes in the pallid landscape. They suited Marjorie Bartrand’s mood. Were not loss and uncertainty the dominant notes of her own changed life?