Not to every one among the children of men is given the power, the faculty, to act as comforter to others. To listen to another’s sorrow, to be told the history of another’s trouble, is one thing: to be able to give back comfort is another. That delicate intuitive sympathy with another’s woe which draws away the sting even while listening to it, which makes that woe its own property as it were, which sheds balm round the sufferer in every word and look and touch: this is surely as much a special gift as the gift of song or the poet’s fine phrenzy, and without it the world would be a much poorer place than it is. This rare gift of sympathy was possessed by Edith Dering in a pre-eminent degree. She was at once emotional and sympathetic. To Lionel in his dire trouble she was a comforter in the truest sense of the word. It was she who preserved his mental balance—the equipoise of his mind. But for her sweet offices he would have become a monomaniac or a misanthrope of the bitterest kind. Naturally she had him with her as much as possible, but still his home was of necessity at Park Newton. To the world he was simply Richard Dering, the unmarried nephew of General St. George. It would not do for him to be seen going to Fern Cottage sufficiently often to excite either scandal or suspicion. He could only visit there as the intimate friend of Mrs. Garside and her niece. Sometimes he took his uncle with him, sometimes Tom, in order to divert suspicion. For him to enter the garden gate of Fern Cottage was to cross the threshold of his earthly paradise. Edith and he had been married in the depth of a great trouble—troubles and danger had beset the path of their wedded life ever since. Owing, perhaps, to that very cause week by week, and month by month, their love seemed only to grow in depth and intensity. As yet it had lost nothing of its pristine charm and freshness. The gold-dust of romance lingered about it still. They were man and wife, they had been man and wife for months, but to the world at large they seemed nothing more than ordinary friends. But all Edith’s care and watchful love could not lift her husband, except by fits and starts, out of those moods of gloom and depression which seemed to be settling more closely down upon him day by day. As link after link was added to the chain of evidence, each one tending to incriminate his cousin still more deeply, his moods seemed to grow darker and more difficult of removal. With his cousin Lionel associated no more than was absolutely necessary. They rarely met each other till dinner-time, and then they met with nothing more than a simple “How do you do?” and in conversation they never got beyond some half-dozen of the barest commonplaces. Lionel always left the table as soon as the cloth was drawn.