Left to herself, she would have joined some band of workers, as missionary, nurse or teacher--as servant in any capacity. It would not have mattered to her what so that she could have felt she was doing something towards lessening the world’s pain. She had yielded to her lover’s insistence from a sense of duty, persuaded that she owed herself to him for his faithfulness and patience. The marriage had brought disappointment to them both. She had hoped some opportunity would be afforded her of satisfying her craving to be of help if only to some few in some small corner of the earth. But her husband’s straitened means had always kept her confined to the bare struggle for existence. Another, in her place, might have been able to give at least sympathy and kindliness. But she was a woman broken in spirit. All her strength went out in her endeavours to be a good wife and mother. And even here she failed. She was of no assistance to her husband, as she knew. For business she had neither heart nor head. In society she was silent and colourless. On her husband’s accession to the baronetcy and what was left of the estate, she had made a last effort to play her part. But the solitary years on the ranch had tended to increase her shyness, and secretly she was glad of the need for economy that compelled them to live abroad more or less in seclusion. The one joy she had was in her love of birds. To gather them about her, feed them, protect them by cunning means against their host of enemies, had become the business of her life. Even in the days of poverty she had been able to do that. She had come to love The Abbey even in the short time they had occupied it. She had made of its neglected gardens a bird sanctuary. Rare species, hunted and persecuted elsewhere, had found there a shelter. At early morning and late evening her little grey-clad figure could be seen stealing softly among the deep yew hedges and the tangled shrubberies that she would not have disturbed. One could always tell her whereabouts by the fluttering of wings above her in the air--the babel of sweet voices that heralded her coming. Her children had never been told her story. She had exacted that as a promise. Though her reason had been satisfied that the rumour told against her had been false, the haunting fear that it yet might be true remained with her. She would not have it passed on to them lest it should shadow their lives as it had darkened hers. Rather than that she was content that they should grow up wondering at the difference between her and other mothers, at her lack of interest in their youthful successes and ambitions; at her strange aloofness from the things that excited their fears and hopes.