"You know how desolate I and the chicks would be without you. Don't think for a moment that I want to lose you, but I do want you not to miss the happiness of married life, and dear Ted often used to say to me how he hoped you would marry. We thought when your letters were so full of Hugh Macdonald's child, that you would marry him; personally I never found him attractive. He had no sense of humour. And Ted said he couldn't see you tied up with him somehow." A heavy sigh followed, then impulsively Mrs. Arbuthnot turned to her sister-in-law. "Oh, Rowena, I can't get accustomed to being without Ted! I can't believe he is silent for ever! I think it is cruel taking men so suddenly away; one day in full enjoyment of health and mental powers, the next struck down, and buried before one realizes they are dead! I wish—I wish we had never gone to India, I wish he had never taken that trip into the cholera-infected region! Nothing will ever comfort me! Men and women ought not to die till they lose their individuality. It is cruel, unreasonable. I never shall understand the reason for it." "Poor Geraldine! It is difficult for you, but let me pass on a sentence a very nice woman gave me long ago. I have never forgotten it: 'Nothing is a puzzle, nothing is a mystery, if you have enough love and trust.'" "Love and trust in whom?" "In the One Who holds our lives in His keeping. Ted is not going to be silent for ever. I never felt so certain as I do now that he has stepped into the Kingdom of Heaven. Just before he went on that trip I had such a nice talk with him." "Oh, I know, I know! He used to tell me that he believed in what you believed, because of your life. And you aren't a long-faced mute, I will say that for you. You comfort me when you talk so, but I'm a worldling. Don't let us talk of our sorrow, let us return to Major Cunliffe. Don't you like him? Oh, I wish you would, for your own sake! He is an old friend of Ted's, and has such a lovely old house in Yorkshire! We stayed there once when his mother was alive." "He's a nice man," said Rowena slowly; "but I don't think he will ever be anything more than that to me." "Don't you ever mean to marry?" Rowena laughed. "Nobody axed me, sir," she said. "Now that's a fib. You had three out in India who were your devoted admirers." "I feel like a kitchen-maid when you talk so," said Rowena.