They heard his voice in passionate protest long after the words themselves were lost, as the sound of the crutches, following Lilian toward the house, grew fainter on the pathway. The interest Annie and William had taken in the mice was quite gone. They still stood opposite to each other in the deepening dusk; but for some minutes after the voices had become inaudible they could not find a word to say. At last William broke the silence. “I say, Annie, what on earth do you think Lilian is up to?” “I don’t know; I can’t think!” “It can’t be all square, you know. I wonder who it is that is writing to her? However, she always was full of tricks, and it is no good saying anything. I shall just hold my tongue about it; wouldn’t you?” “Yes, certainly. We can’t do anything to stop it, and we heard it all by accident. We should only make everybody angry with her and she----” “Would swear we have told lies, and Stephen would back her up.” “And we shouldn’t prevent her getting her own way even then,” said Annie, sorrowfully. She had a shrewd suspicion who the unknown correspondent was, and an incident which occurred a little later confirmed it. Meanwhile the quiet outdoor country life she led, always driving, or walking, or playing some game of their own invention with William, had rapidly restored to her beauty the bloom that unhappiness and _ennui_ had begun to rob it of. George took the most notice of this improvement, and Harry the least. Yet even the latter was not quite insensible to the change for the better in his wife’s good looks, and told her one day, with rough good-humor, that married life seemed to agree with her, though she did not seem to appreciate what it had done for her. Annie answered with a rather ironical laugh. It seemed to her that the appreciation ought to be on the other side. For he remained one of the most careless and selfish of husbands, while she fulfilled her duty to him with an exactness which got no thanks from him. She was his slave in little things, and never asked for the smallest service or attention in return. Perhaps Wilfred was right when he suggested that she would rather be without it. However that might he, he was as free to go where he pleased and do as he pleased as in his bachelor days, while he alone, of all these young men, never had to hunt for things he had mislaid, never had to cry out for a missing button, and had his scanty correspondence done for him much better than he could have done it for himself. William once humbly expressed a wish that she would get the servants to look after his hunting-things as she did for Harry. But she only laughed at him. “Well,” said William, rather aggrieved, swinging his legs backward and forward from the gate on which they were sitting together, “I do ever so many more things for you than Harry does.” “Ah, but then he is my husband!” returned she, offering him an apple.