Perhaps his tone was more peremptory than he knew. Anstice looked at him with heightened colour in her cheeks. "I don't think that was mentioned in our bond," she said in her quietest tone. He looked quite startled, then smiled at her. Justin's smiles were rare. Anstice felt ashamed of herself. "Then I will plead like Ruffie. Please! Please! Please!" Without a word Anstice seated herself at the piano. She sang first a lullaby, and as she sang Justin leant his head back against the cushion in his chair and closed his eyes. Then she sang an old English ballad, and she finished with "Robin Adair." "That's because we're close to Scotland here," she said, laughing, as she left the piano. "I don't sing in public, so you must consider yourself favoured. It is the old simple ballads I sing to the children. The modern young people would be disgusted, but they are not critical yet." "Thank you. I am not modern, and I like ballads better than the French and Italian operatic music which one hears so much nowadays. Now will you sit down? I want to talk to you. The winter is going. Don't you think that a horse would take you over the Fells better than your two legs? I don't like your wandering about alone. You do ride?" "Yes, I do," said Anstice. "I won't pretend that I shouldn't like a steed, for I should love to have one, but you mustn't make me give up my walking. It is good for one's health; and to wander out on the short turf up amongst the Fells and mountains is a continual delight to me. You must remember I have the car now. If you could afford it, two rough mountain ponies for the little girls would give them tremendous pleasure. They ride the old pony when they get the chance, but his back is too broad for them, and now Ruffie uses him, they have to be content with walking." "I'll see what I can do in that way, but if they ride, they'll be getting into mischief." "I don't think so. It will keep them out of mischief. I wish you were a little fonder of your small daughters." He contracted his brows. "They're too like their mother," he said shortly. "That isn't their fault, poor mites! They're conscious of your indifference to them, which is bad for you, and bad for them. I don't want to ask you about the past, but doesn't time make us more tender with the erring? If you could have gentler thoughts—" He interrupted her. "Do you think I can ever forget," he said in a tone of concentrated bitterness, "that it is owing to her failure as wife and mother that my only son is as he is. He might have been a strong, sturdy youngster, in full health and strength of body, instead of which he is a suffering, mutilated cripple. Whilst I have him before my eyes, do you think I can ever have gentle thoughts of his mother?" Anstice had never realized how much he felt his boy's deformity. She said very gently: