“How?” repeated her companion; “why, you must talk to Arthur, find out what he is thinking of joining; and, if it be as we imagine, prevent his doing anything so utterly suicidal.” “And you think I could prevent him?” “If you have any influence at all over him, and I suppose no other human being has so much, and like to exert it, I should think you might.” “Miss Hope, I have no influence.” Many a time afterwards, Heather marvelled how she came to utter that sentence,—utter it as calmly as though no bitterness lurked in the words. She marvelled how everything grew clear to her in a moment, as it seemed; how, for the time, she appeared to be another person looking calmly and dispassionately at her own position, and forming a conclusion concerning that position. The years came and stood before her then—the years during which she had loved and laboured in vain, in which she had spent her strength for nought, in which she had been happy and unsuspecting, in which she had never been other than vaguely conscious of a want in which, though her life had always lacked the principal ingredient all lives require before they can be pronounced happy, she had yet believed herself so—believed that hers was a lot to be desired. The years came and stood before her, and each had the same story to tell,—that during its course she had grown no more necessary to her husband, no nearer to his confidence, no dearer to his heart, no more appreciated by him. At last, the question which had long been tormenting her was put in a tangible form, the enigma that had puzzled her was solved in a single sentence spoken by her own lips,— “I have no influence.” Miss Hope did not immediately answer. She sat looking in the sad, lovely face before her, till at last she arrived at a perfect conviction of the truth conveyed in Heather’s words. In all her life before she had never met a woman who possessed no power either to lead or drive, to coax, to flatter, to delude or to bully a husband; and, although she saw Arthur did not appreciate Heather, she had not dreamed of his wife having not the slightest influence over him. “So that is the way of it,” she said, after a long pause. “That is the way of it,” Heather answered, rising as she spoke. Next moment she dropped back into her chair. “It is nothing. I am not going to faint,” she said, detaining Miss Hope, who was darting off for water. “Only this talk has tried me. Don’t you understand?” Miss Hope was not much given to such demonstrations, but she knelt down on the floor beside Heather, and twined her arms round her nephew’s wife. “Lay your head on my shoulder, dear,” she whispered; and Heather drooped it wearily as she was desired.