"Archie has said nothing to me; nothing at all." Then the dog-cart was brought round, and the two men drove off to the station, leaving the two women to their own devices. Miss Halling had a new piece to practise, and a new song to try. Dolly went up to her own room and stayed there for a couple of hours. Then she rang the bell. "I am at home to-day to no one," she said. "Remember, to no one, not even to Mrs. Werner. Tell Miss Halling this." After a time she could not, however, endure the solitude any longer; and so stealing downstairs, let herself out into the laurel walk, and paced its length, so one who watched her with pitying eyes said afterwards, hundreds and hundreds of times. That over, her maid, finding she refused to come in to luncheon, took her out a biscuit and a glass of wine. "Do try to swallow it, ma'am," she entreated; and Mrs. Mortomley looking at her with almost unseeing eyes complied. After that the girl told Miss Lenore to run and look for her mamma, and ten minutes after child and mother were sitting hand clasped in hand in a summer-house placed in a retired part of the grounds. Hour after hour crept by. Lenore had been asleep and was awake again. Dolly's eyes had grown weary of looking at the trees and the grass and the flowers, and her ears were aching by reason of listening for the sound of voices that came not, of footsteps that tarried by the way. At last a servant hurried to where she sat, saying, "The master has come back, ma'am." They all knew she was anxious; they were all, perhaps, anxious themselves. Then, like one weak from long illness, she arose and, walking slowly, retraced her way to the house. On the lawn Mortomley met her. "Well, dear?" she asked. "It is all right, little woman," he answered, with a more cheerful expression than she had seen lighten his face for many a day. "Everything will go on well now." She did not ask a question; she would not damp his exultation by a word, though she saw Rupert standing in the background with bent brows and lowering visage. For the time being, her husband was happy. If her own soul misgave her, why should she try to make him unhappy? A most unsuitable wife for Mortomley those who know most about such matters exclaim, and I dare not venture to say them nay. Only in his joy as in his sorrow she was loyal. She was no Griselda; no senselessly submissive woman; no besotted creature who thought her husband, simply because he chanced to be her husband, could do no wrong; but she was loyal. If he made mistakes, to others she would uphold them; if he was weak, as sensitive and generous and noble natures usually are in some points, Dolly would not have been Dolly had it been possible for her to side with those who criticized his failings.