‘Dear,’ said Carry, wooing her little daughter for a favourable reply with soft caresses, ‘isn’t Beau kind to Tom? Don’t you love Beau?’ The child searched her face, as children do, in an unconscious but penetrating search for motives unknown. Janet saw that her mother was wistful and unassured, though she did not probably know how to name these motives. ‘I do well enough,’ she said. ‘I don’t think of him. Mozer, take me out with you.’ And this was all that could be got out of Janet. The black brow and the dark hair made her look so much more resolute and determined than usual that poor Carry was almost afraid of her little girl, and believed that she hid beneath that careless answer thoughts and feelings which were quite determined and well-assured. CHAPTER IV The house was found after a great many not unpleasurable researches--little expeditions, now and then, which Lady Caroline and her husband took together, with reminiscences of their first honeymoon travels, which had been so sweet. She forgot, as a woman is so ready to do, all the little deceptions and disappointments of the intervening years, and when they found at last the very thing they wanted the elation and exhilaration of a new beginning entered fully into Carry’s mind. If Edward had shown himself too contented with his life, too little ambitious, too indifferent to any stimulant, there was something in the fact of being unsettled, of having no certain motive of his life, of moving about constantly from one place to another, which would very well account for that. But when he was no longer subject to interruption, when his time and his thoughts were free, who could doubt that a new spring of energy would burst forth? In the old days, when they had first met, he had been full of projects. Was not that one of the charms that had caught her girlish heart? He had so fully meant to make himself a great influence in the world, to help to sway the course of events, to make the world a better place. They had talked of that before even they talked of love--and her enthusiasm had been roused and fired by his. He had told her--how well she remembered!--that it was a mistake of dull minds to think that it was hard to obtain an influence upon one’s fellow-men. On the contrary, if you are but in earnest--in such earnest that none could mistake your sincerity and true feeling--then the response, especially of the young, especially of the working people, whom it was of so much importance to influence for good, was most ready, almost immediate. So he said, discoursing for hours as they wandered about the Swiss valley in which they had met, Carry Lindores all in a flame of enthusiastic listening, responding with her whole heart. What a beautiful lot it had seemed to her to share this work and this life of this new crusader, this chief of men! She was not Lady Caroline then, but a poor little girl in a faded frock, her father