"Don't cry, my dear. Young people don't know where trouble lies. They think it is in external calamity, and sickness and death. But one does not find it so. The only real troubles are those which we cause each other through the affections. Those whom we love chasten us. I never shed a single tear for her when she died. There had been too many during her life, for I loved her better than anything in the world except my husband, who died when he was twenty-five and I was twenty-two. You often remind me of him. You are a very dear child to me. She said she hoped you would make up a little to me; and you have--not a little. I have brought you up differently. I saw my mistake with her. I sheltered her too much. I hope I have not run into the opposite extreme with you. I have allowed you more liberty than is usual, and I have encouraged you to look at life for yourself, and to think and act for yourself, and learn by your own experience. And now go and bathe your eyes, and see if you can find me Fitzgerald's 'Omar Khayyám.' I think I saw it last in the morning-room. John and I were talking about it on Friday. I dare say he will know where it is." CHAPTER X. "Si tu ne m'aimes pas moi je t'aime." It was the time of afternoon tea. Miss Fane rolled off the sofa, and with the hydraulic sniff that can temporarily suspend the laws of nature, proceeded to pour out tea. Presently John and the dogs came in, and Di, who had found Mrs. Courtenay's book without his assistance, followed. John had not the art of small-talk. Miss Fane, who was in the habit of attempting the simultaneous absorption of liquid and farinaceous nutriment with a perseverance not marked by success, was necessarily silent, save when a carroway seed took the wrong turn. She seldom spoke in the presence of food, any more than others do in church. Few things apart from the Bull of Bashan commanded Miss Fane's undivided homage, but food never failed to, though it was reserved for plovers' eggs and the roe of the sturgeon to stir the latent emotion of her nature to its depths. The dogs did their tricks. Lindo contrived to swallow all his own and half Fritz's portion, but, fortunately for the cause of justice, during a muffin-scattering choke on Lindo's part, Fritz's long red tongue was able to glean together fragments of what he imagined he had lost sight of for ever. Di inquired whether there were evening service. "Evening service at seven," said Miss Fane; "supper at quarter past eight." "Do not go to church again," said John. "Come for a walk with me." Di readily agreed. It was very pleasant to her to be with John. She had begun to feel that he and she were near akin. He was her only first cousin. The nearness of their relationship, accounting as it did in her mind for a growing intimacy, prevented any suspicion of that intimacy having sprung from another source.