'Dolly' turned to her with a queer ridiculous solemnity. "It seems to me," he observed, "a competency for an able-bodied young woman. I don't know what you can do, but I think you're quite in a position to tell the truth--if you happen to know it. Anybody dependent on you?" "Not a soul," smiled Winnie. "I've a mother and an unmarried sister. You see the difference? I think I heard the gong. Good evening." "Good evening, Mr. Wigram." Winnie rushed in to dress for dinner, pitiful, smiling, and thoughtful. The quartette was not as merry as usual that evening. Bertie Merriam was rather glum, and when Winnie perceived it she grew remorseful. Up at the Mount he had, at last, shown signs of making a definite advance; if she had not snubbed him, she had at least fought him off by affected unconsciousness of his meaning, by persistent unsentimentality. It was almost against her own will; she could not help it; the instinct in her was irresistible. She might have been equal to standing by Tora Aikenhead's view--"As long as my own conscience is clear, it's no affair of yours what I did before I knew you, and I shan't say a word about it." She could certainly have followed Stephen's atavistic 'public-school' idea of honour with perfect readiness. These were both, in their different ways, forms of defiance. But Mrs. Lenoir's compromise--"I'll wait till the truth can't hurt me, though it may hurt you"--was not defiance; it was deceit. Under the influence of gratitude to the friend to whom she owed so much kindness, and of the deference which she honestly accorded to her adviser's experience and wisdom, she had accepted it. All very well to accept it in words! She found that she could not act upon it. Instead of making Bertie Merriam like her so well that the truth could be told to him without risk--or, at any rate, with the minimum of risk--she was spending her time in trying to prevent him from liking her in that way at all. If she went on, she would succeed; he was sensitive, proud, easy to discourage. Yet, as things stood, she knew that she would not be able to resist going on. Then it came to this--Mrs. Lenoir's compromise would not work. It might or might not be justifiable, but it simply would not work in Winnie's hands. She could not carry it out, because it meant in the end that she was to behave just as Godfrey Ledstone had. The gravamen of his offence was that he had been ashamed of her; now she was being ashamed of herself. He had conceded to his family the right to think her shameful; she was allowing the same right to the Major, and merely trying to curry favour enough to override his judgment. Such a course was not only flat against her theories; it was flat against the nature which had produced the theories. And, in practice, it resulted in a deadlock; it kept the Major at a standstill. He did not retreat, because his feelings dictated an advance. He could not advance, because she would not let him. There he