‘It is not for Tom,’ she said; ‘Edward, cannot you understand? it is for myself.’ ‘You are not the sort of woman to think of yourself when Tom’s interests are at stake. We ought to stay even after he is gone, to make all the friends we can for him. For my own part, I like the place very well,’ Beaufort said. ‘And then there is your sister so near at hand. You must try to forget the little accident that has disgusted you, Carry. Think of the pleasure of having Edith so near at hand--and that excellent fellow John--though he’s too much of an M.P.’ It was with purpose that Beaufort laughed, with that gentle and friendly ridicule of his brother-in-law, to carry her thoughts away from the accident--from Tom’s escapade, which he thought was the foundation of Carry’s trouble. And what could she say more? She did not, could not, tell him that Tom’s look had reminded her of another, and that Torrance himself, standing in full length in the hall, claiming its sovereignty, master of all that was within, kept the miseries of her past life and her unsatisfied heart too terribly before her. Of that she could say nothing to her husband, nor of Janet’s rebellion, nor above all of what was intolerable in Edith’s gentle society, the sense of her superior happiness, her pity for poor Carry! He might have divined what it was which made the house intolerable to her; but if he did not, how could she say it? Thus Lady Car gradually achieved the power of living on, of smiling upon all who surrounded her with something in her eyes which nobody comprehended, but which some few people were vaguely aware of, though they comprehended it not. ‘Poor Carry!’ Lady Edith said, in the very tone which Lady Car heard in her heart: but it was said in John Erskine’s library at Dalrulzian, with the windows closed, five miles away. ‘Why poor Carry?’ asked her husband; ‘if you were to ask her, she would say she was a happy woman, happy beyond anything she could have hoped. When I think of her with that brute Torrance--where is she now, but in such different circumstances.’ ‘Oh, John, the circumstances are different; Edward is very nice: but---- ’ ‘But what?’ ‘Carry is not like you and me,’ said Edith, shaking her head. ‘No: perhaps so much the better for us. She is fanciful and poetical and nervous, not easy to satisfy; but the comparison--must be like heaven after hell.’ Edith continued to shake her head, but said no more. What was there to say? She could not perhaps have put it into words had she tried, and how get John to understand it?--a man immersed in public business, fearing that soon he should need a private secretary, which was an expense quite unjustified by his means. She patted him on the shoulder as she stood behind his chair, and said, ‘Poor John, have you all these letters to answer?’ ‘Every one,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘You are in a compassionate humour to-day. Suppose you answer a few of them for me, instead of saying poor John.’