“Well, when the doctor says that, what can one do?” asked Lady Dundrannan. “Oh, one must follow his advice, of course!” I murmured, with a nod of my head. The bark of our conversation (another metaphor may well be employed to illustrate her skill) being thus piloted through the shoals of truth into the calm deep waters of humbug, its voyage ended prosperously. “I should never forgive myself, and Waldo would never forgive me, if I took the slightest risk,” Nina concluded, as she rose from the seat. But as we stood there, facing one another—before we began to stroll back to the house—as we stood facing one another, all alone, we allowed ourselves one little relapse into reality. “Do you think of being off soon?” I asked, with a smile. She gave me one sharp glance and a contemptuous smile. “Before your wedding—whenever that may be, Julius!” CHAPTER XXVII IN FIVE YEARS WINTER had set in again when Lucinda and I came together to Cragsfoot. The picture of her on her first evening there stands out vivid in my memory. Sir Paget had received her with affectionate, but perhaps somewhat ceremonious, courtesy; there was a touch of ratifying a treaty of peace in his manner. She was minded to come closer in intimacy; for in these recent days—before and just after our wedding—a happy confidence seemed to possess her. Self-defense and the hardness it has to carry with it were necessary to her no longer; she reached out more freely for love and friendship, and broke the bounds of that thoughtful isolation which had so often served to keep the woman herself apart from all about her. She was not on guard now; that was the meaning of the change which had come over her; not on guard and not fighting. After dinner she drew a low stool up beside the old man’s big armchair before the fire, and sat down beside him, laying one arm across his knees; I sat smoking on the other side of the hearth. Sir Paget laid his hand on hers for a moment, as though to welcome her bodily presence thus in touch with him. “You’ll be wondering how it happened,” she began, “and Julius won’t have been able to tell you. Probably it never occurred to him to try, though I suppose he’s told you all the actual happenings—the outward things, I mean, you know. It was at Ste. Maxime that we—began to be ‘we’ to one another. I knew it in him then—perhaps sooner than he did—but I don’t know; he’s still rather secretive about himself, though intolerably inquisitive about other people. But I did know it in him; and I searched, and found it in myself—not love then, but a feeling of partnership, of alliance. I was very lonely then. Well, I can stand that. I was standing it; and I could have gone on—perhaps! I wonder if I could! No, not after I found out about Arsenio’s taking that money! That would have broken me—if it hadn’t been for Ste. Maxime.” She paused for a moment; when she spoke again, she addressed me—on the other side of the fireplace.