Dora was out. She was out a good deal now; exceedingly busy in good works of a different type from those affected by Sister Cecilia. The winter air seemed to invigorate her, and she tramped miles with a can of soup or an infant's flannel wrapper. And always when she came in she was gay, as her father described it. She gave amusing descriptions of her visits among the cottagers, retailed little quaint conceits such as drop from rustic lips declared unto them by their fathers from the old time before them, and in it all she displayed a keen insight into human nature. At times she was brilliant; which her father noticed with grave approval, ignorant or heedless of the fact that brilliancy means friction. Happy people are not brilliant. She suddenly developed a taste for politics, and read the newspaper with a keen interest. Several half-forgotten duties were revived, and their performance became a matter of principle. Mr. Glynde did not notice these subtle changes. Old men are generally selfish, more so, if possible, than young ones, and Mr. Glynde was eminently so. He only saw other people in relationship to himself. He looked at them through himself. Mrs. Glynde had taken the opportunity of a “cutting out” to mention that she thought a change would do Dora good. During the three months that had elapsed since the announcement of Jem's death, Stagholme had necessarily been a somewhat dull abode. The winter had not come on well, but in fits and starts, with trying winds and much rain. She said these things while she cut into her roll of red flannel--the scissors seemed to give her courage. The Rector of Stagholme had awful visions of a furnished house at Brighton or a crammed hotel on the Riviera. “Where do you want to go to?” he inquired, with a gruffness which meant less than it conveyed. “To town, dear.” Now Mr. Glynde loved London. In the meantime Dora was standing at the gate of the gamekeeper's little cottage-garden which adjoined the orchard at Stagholme. There were certain women with whom Sister Cecilia did not “get on,” and these were by tacit understanding relegated to Dora. This same inability to “get on” was one of the crosses which Sister Cecilia carried in a magnified condition through life. The gamekeeper's wife was one of the failures--a hardy mother of several hardy little embryo gamekeepers, who held that she knew her own business of motherhood best, and intimated as much to Sister Cecilia.