"Ah, don't remind me of the black blots in my life! I have had two. I lost our darling little only child at two years old, and then my husband, after only five years of happy married life. He was killed out hunting. But these times come to us all. I forget them or try to do so." Rowena remembered that only two years previously she had been living the same life as Mrs. Burke; and felt that she could not judge her. There was a little silence, then Mrs. Burke said with an effort: "They say every one has a skeleton in the cupboard. Do you know what mine is? It's a certain verse from the Bible that haunts me, and turns up at times to disturb my tranquillity. You see I know my Bible well. We were too much nourished on it ever to forget it, and the verse was a favourite one of my father's; he used to preach on it: "'Cast not away therefore your confidence which hath great recompense of reward!'" "That comes up at intervals. Of course I have cast my confidence away. I have none in God or Heaven or in any of the unseen things which good people say we ought to have even down here. I have made my choice and must abide by it. There now! To no living being have I ever confessed so much before. What is it about you that makes me talk so?" "I don't know," said Rowena with her sunshiny smile, "but I know now why you have attracted me. I felt there was something beautiful deep down out of reach." "Beautiful! Deep down! What do you mean? Haven't I just shown you, as parsons would say, the depravity of the human heart?" Rowena did not speak for a moment; she was looking away dreamily as if into space. They were pacing up and down an old box-bordered walk, and now for a moment paused at the end of it. The sun was sinking slowly behind a belt of pines silhouetted against the line of the blue distant hills. "I remember about a year ago," said Rowena slowly, "talking to my brother's Scotch gardener about a certain part of the shrubbery where things grew in the most wonderful thriving way. He said that long ago that bit of ground had been a vegetable plot, and had been well worked. Later on a summer-house had been built upon it, then it had fallen into ruins and the shrubbery planted. He said that deep down under the rubbish cleared away of the summer-house, there was real good soil, and it was making itself felt in spite of the time that had elapsed since it had been worked." "Now what on earth are you doing? Giving me a parable to read. There's no good soil left in my soul, let me tell you! Come along in, and don't for goodness' sake set my skeleton walking! He is shut up and locked away as a rule." Rowena said no more. When "good night" was being said, Mrs. Burke remarked with her jolly laugh: "One day I shall demand an account of your depths, and you will have to give it to me. But I warn you in my house, you will have to frivol whether you like it or not." CHAPTER III CHASING SHADOWS