Anne seemed to have receded from Janet during these last days. Perhaps the Duchess had elbowed her out. Perhaps Anne divined that Janet had been told all about her unfortunate love affair. Anne's patient dignity had a certain remoteness in it. Her mother, whose hitherto thinly-draped designs on Stephen were now clothed only in the recklessness of despair, made Anne's life well-nigh unendurable to her at this time, a constant mortification of her refinement and her pride. She withdrew into herself. And perhaps also Anne was embarrassed by the knowledge that she had inadvertently become aware, when Janet's mind had wandered, of something connected with the burning of papers which Janet was concealing, and which, as Anne could see, was distressing her more even than the sudden death of Mrs Brand. Fred took charge of his sister in an effusive manner when she was well enough to travel. She was very silent all the way home. She had become shy with her brother, depressed in his society. She had always known that evil existed in the world, but she had somehow managed to combine that knowledge with the comfortable conviction that the few people she cared for were "different." She observed nothing except what happened under her actual eyes, and then only if her eyes were forcibly turned in that direction. She knew Fred drank only because she had seen him drunk. The shaking hand, and broken nerve, and weakly-violent temper, the signs of intemperance when he was sober, were lost upon her. She dismissed them with the reflection that Fred was like that. Cause and effect did not exist for Janet. And those for whom they do not exist sustain heavy shocks. Cuckoo her friend, and Fred her brother! The horror of that remembrance never left her during these days. She could not think about it. She could only silently endure it. Poor Janet did not realize even now that the sole reason why Cuckoo had made friends with her was in order to veil the intimacy with her brother. The hard, would-be smart woman would not, without some strong reason, have made much of so unfashionable an individual as Janet in the first instance, though there was no doubt that in the end Cuckoo had grown fond of Janet for her own sake. And her genuine liking for the sister had survived the rupture with the brother. The dog-cart was waiting for Fred and Janet at Mudbury, and, as they drove in the dusk through the tranquil country lanes, Janet drew a long breath. "You must not take on about Mrs Brand's death too much," said Fred at last, who had also been restlessly silent for the greater part of the journey. Janet did not answer. "We must all die some day," continued Fred. "It's the common lot. I did not like Mrs Brand as much as you did, Janet. She was not my sort--but still--when I heard the news----" "I loved her," said Janet hoarsely. "I would have done anything for her."