Her face lighted up instantly, yet John Gore was struck by a shallow gleam like fear in her eyes. “He has gone into the country for a few days.” “The country! Where?—what part?” “Suffolk, I believe.” He handed her the letter, and turned to the window as though to give her leisure to break the seal and read it. Yet for nearly half a minute she suffered the letter to lie unopened upon her lap as though she were afraid to dip into its contents. Her eyes had fixed themselves with a look of prophetic dread upon the Spaniard’s picture where the sunlight shone. John Gore, standing at the window, heard the stiff crackle of the paper in her hands as she spread it upon her knee. Stephen Gore and my Lady Purcell had been friends for so many years that the son almost thought of them as brother and sister. His father had been Lionel Purcell’s friend and Barbara’s godfather, and the sympathies of the two families had seemed to flow in one common channel. “John”—her voice startled him, for his thoughts had flown elsewhere, as a lover’s thoughts will; he turned and saw her sitting with the letter on her lap, her face dead white, and the muscles twitching about her mouth—“will you ring for Jael?” He looked at her keenly, with some concern. “Have you had bad news—” “No—” “—about Barbara?” “No, no, I am only faint. I have not been well these last few days.” And she crumpled the letter in her hands. As he crossed the room he heard her give a curious, shivering cry, and when he turned again she was sitting with her face hidden in her hands, swaying slightly from side to side, her whole body shaken by some convulsive storm of tears. John Gore looked at her helplessly. Experience had not taught him to deal with an hysterical woman of forty. Seizing the most discreet impulse, he moved toward the door and nearly pushed against Mrs. Jael as he opened it. He stood aside, and nodded her into the room, feeling that only a woman could deal with a woman in such a case. What the woe was he could only conjecture; perhaps some woman’s affair that made her emotions passionate and uncertain.