And then the press began to set flying little gnat-like biting doubts as to Strange’s unaccountable silence, after it was ascertained through a long-delayed scrap of a note to Mrs. Fellowes that he had joined an ivory expedition into an unsettled district. Then to add to her anxieties, the missionary, grateful for his intended capture, ran down to Strange Hall, and being rather an ass, and having been left with only the tail end of a constitution—a solemn and gloomy one—he gave her a most lurid and awful impression of those parts into which Humphrey had penetrated. She put a brave front on, but she had a shocking time of it, and her usual song to her baby in exactly Humphrey’s tones was, “Dann willst du weine, du liebe kleine!” which the baby looked upon as a huge joke. Week after week passed and not a word, and then whisperings of relief expeditions began to stir the papers, and Mrs. Fellowes was hurrying up wildly with her work to be able to get to Gwen. At last she came over from the station in a fly, a day or two before she was expected, and found Gwen in Strange’s den, which showed tokens of her all over the place, playing with her child, now a big fellow who beat the record in the matter of crawling. When the nurse took him at last, Gwen said to Mrs. Fellowes rather grimly, “The county considers I should wear a widow’s cap, and sport crêpe, and my horrible state of plumpness makes me to stink in their nostrils. Just look at my arms! I wish I could oblige them,” she went on wearily, “and bear my woe according to their rules of decency. Lady Mary rolled down on me and stayed a week, and never got out what she came to say until I was putting her into the railway carriage on her way back to London, then she produced her rebuke on the top of a sigh, and began a prayer, but the train started before she got well into it. “‘My dear,’ she said, ‘I think that under the circumstances a plain black gown and a bonnet—hats to my mind are at present unseemly—and then, my dear Gwen, if by any means you could manage, ahem, not to _add_ to your plumpness—people in our position must set an example—I assure you, for myself, I lost eight pounds and a half the first six months of my widowhood.’ “Then she began her rather irrelevant prayer.” “Gwen, sit down, and I’ll make tea, and tell you about your father.” Gwen leant back in her chair and put her hands to her hot head. “I forget everything but myself and this fattening misery of mine. He is failing very much, is he not? His letters somehow have a fragile sound. They have a horrible habit of making me howl, I have got so maudlin I howl now quite easily; he has been at ‘Chavasse’ again, and to rather an awful extent.”