And then when she had crawled out of the room, with smarting eyes and aching head, and found the way up to her own shabby, gloomy room with staggering feet, there came to her ear from the garden the sound of a fresh, girlish voice, uttering words which were balm to the wounded soul. “I don’t care,” Mabin was saying to some unseen person among the yew trees on the lawn, “I don’t care what she’s done. She is a sweet woman, and I love her all the more for having to be preached to by that old cat!” No eloquence, no smoothly rounded periods of the most brilliant speaker in the universe could have conveyed to poor unhappy Dorothy half the solace of those inelegant words! She began to smile, all red-eyed as she was, and to feel that there was something worth living for in the world after all. And when she had bathed her face, and lain down for a little ease to her aching head, she was able presently to look out with an impulse of pleasure at the bright green of the lawn, where the shadows of the tall elms were growing long, and to listen to the sound of young voices talking and laughing, and to feel that there was something left in life after all. The voices, as she knew, were those of Mabin and Rudolph. The Vicar’s son had called, with a huge bunch of flowering rushes, for Mrs. Dale, while the mysterious visitor was with her. The parlormaid, therefore, had informed him that Mrs. Dale was engaged, but that Miss Rose was in the garden; and he had lost no time in going in search of the latter. He was surprised to find her in a state of great distress, shedding furtive tears, and trying to hide a face eloquent of grief. “May I ask what’s the matter?” he asked, when she had begun to talk about the flowers and the trees, in a rather broken and unmanageable voice. “Oh, I don’t know whether I ought to tell you!” “Well, look here. I’ll go as far as the wall that shuts in the kitchen-garden; that’s on the other side of the house, you know. I’ll walk very slowly, and if I find any caterpillars on the gooseberries I’ll pick them off. That will give you a long time. And when I come back I shall expect you to have made up your mind whether you can tell me or not. Only,” added he wistfully, “I do hope you will make up your mind that you can; for I’m ‘dying of curiosity,’ as the ladies say.” “No, they don’t say that,” said Mabin cantankerously. “Women are much less curious than the men, really. I wouldn’t have heard what I did for worlds if I could have helped it. And you are ‘dying’ to know it!” “Well, I won’t argue with you,” replied Rudolph philosophically, as he walked slowly, according to his promise, in the direction of the kitchen-garden.