note began, and I rang and told Mason to send him away at once, and _she_ was cross. Half an hour later some one sent a note with, `bearer waits reply' on the envelope, and I had to sit up and write. The doctor came at twelve, and said Joyce was perfectly well, but I looked feverish; couldn't I lie down and rest? I could not look at lunch, which was just as well, as there was none for me, and Joyce fell off her high-chair just over my head, and I thought she was killed. She screamed for an age, and I forgot my own head, thinking of hers; but afterwards! I cried to myself with sheer pain and misery, and I thought of your `long, solitary day' with such envy. The afternoon was the same story, and when Robert came home he was _so_ disappointed to find me worse! I didn't tell _him_ my experiences; he doesn't see the humour of them when they affect me, but I said miserably to myself, `some day I'll tell Vanna, and we'll laugh.' Dear me, what a comfort it is to have a woman friend!" Vanna smiled at her affectionately. It was good to hear Jean rattle away in her old racy fashion, but her skilled eye was quick to note the signs of fragility in the lovely face, which paled and flushed with such suspicious rapidity. "I think Sister Vanna had better apply for the vacant `place,' and take possession until you are strong. Would you like to have me with you, dear? We have been having rather a strenuous time lately, and when the present inmates leave at the end of this week, I should be quite glad to shut the house and give the staff a rest. It's a poor thing if I give my life to nursing, and can't wait upon my one friend when she needs me. Would you like to have me?" Needless to say, Jean was enchanted at the prospect; so was Robert when he returned at the close of the day; so also, more inexplicably, was Piers himself. Vanna had been prepared for expostulations against a proposal which would leave her less free for his visits, but none came, and their absence added to the dull weight of oppression which had hung over her ever since the evening when she had heard of Edith Morton's engagement. Try as she would to live in the present, and avoid vain imaginings, she could not blind herself to a certain change in Piers, which seemed to increase rather than diminish. It was not a lessening of love; never had she known him more devoted, more passionately her own; but in his tenderness was an element of sorrow, of self-reproach, which chilled her heart. Piers was sorry for her! Some thing was working in his mind, the knowledge of which must give her pain. What could it be? The revelation came one evening after she had been located for some weeks in the Gloucester _menage_, and for all her forebodings, found her unprepared. "Vanna, I have something to tell you to-night. I have been trying to say it for some time. Darling, can you be brave?"