'Are you quite happy about her?' inquires he, not perceiving his companion's shrinking from the subject, glad to escape for a few moments from the contemplation of his own unpicturesque ills to the more poetic ones of other people, and walking a few paces down the road at her side. 'Had not you better take care that she does not slip through your fingers?' CHAPTER XVII A fortnight later, and Peggy is alone. Prue has gone after all--gone to that paradise, in yearning for which she seemed to be stooping towards the grave; she has gone to empty jugs of water over stairs on Guardsmen's heads, to put crackers into the coat-tail pockets of Secretaries of Legation, and set booby-traps for Members of Parliament. No wonder that even before entering upon these glories their mere prospect had restored her to more than her pristine vigour. She has gone, with Peggy's one string of pearls in her trinket-case; with Peggy's best gown, contracted and modified to her smaller shape, in her trunk. She has gone, nodding her head, waving her hand, and blowing kisses, altogether restored apparently to the blithe Prueship of earlier days. But at what price? Peggy's repugnance to the plan has been in no degree diminished by the fact of her having consented to it. She has consented to it, driven partly by a suspicion that her opposition has been half-due to no solicitude for her sister's welfare, but to a resentment and an ache of her own; driven much more, though, by Mr. Evans's few light words, 'Take care that she does not slip through your fingers!' They pursue her by day and by night. 'Slip through her fingers!' There seems a dreadful fitness in the very form of the phrase. Other people may die, may be killed. Prue would just slip away! Oh, if he had but used another form of expression! As she lies on her wakeful, anxious bed, one couple of lines torments her with what she feels to be its prophetic applicability: 'Like a caged bird escaping suddenly The little innocent soul flitted away!' Some day she will wake to find her arms empty of little Prue, whom for seventeen fond years they have girdled. That Prue has always been sickly and often forward, has from the moment of her birth caused her far more pain than pleasure, makes no sort of difference. The sea does not reckon how many little rills run into it. A great love has no debit and credit account; it gives vastly, not inquiring for any return. People in weak health, who can become genuinely moribund upon opposition, possess a weapon which the sound cannot pretend to emulate. On the evening of the day of Margaret's visit to the Vicarage Freddy Ducane had unexpectedly returned to the Manor. 'I believe that that wretched little Prue is going to die on purpose to spite Peggy for not letting her go to the Harboroughs!' says milady crossly, vexed at her nephew's serene flower face. 'I cannot think what possessed you to put such an idea into her stupid little head!'