I sometimes wondered whether Annabel reproached herself too severely for having, by her well-meant interference, made such havoc of my life: had I spoiled hers, as she had spoiled mine, I felt I should have eaten my heart out with unavailing remorse. But one day this doubt was set for ever at rest by her saying to me-- "Do you know, Reggie dear, I am sometimes inclined to blame myself for not having interfered with Fay more than I did, and for letting her have so much of her own way. After all, she was young, and I knew so much better about everything than she did." After that remark, anxiety about Annabel's conscience no longer troubled me. She and Arthur were whole-heartedly on my side in this hideous separation between my wife and me. Naturally they did not say much to me in condemnation of Fay: I could neither have permitted nor endured it: but I knew they were feeling it in my presence and expressing it in each other's; and they put no curb upon their expressions of indignation against Frank. My old nurse, however, thought differently. To my surprise--though by this time I ought not to have been surprised at any vagary of Ponty's--the person she blamed in the whole affair was myself: and, what is more, she did not hesitate to say so. I felt that she was unjust--cruelly unjust--and all the more so that she had been so indulgent to me all through my childhood: but what I thought of her had no effect upon Ponty, any more than it had when I was a little boy. "You've yourself to thank for the whole terrible business, Master Reggie," she said to me after my restoration to what my friends and doctors described as "health." She was far too good a nurse to utter unwelcome words into ears that she did not consider strong enough to receive them. To the needs of a sick soul neither she, nor anybody else, paid any heed. "I knew there'd be trouble as soon as you began that 'Oranges and Lemons' nonsense of having Miss Annabel and Mr. Frank to live with you; and I said so, but you would have your own way, you having a spice of obstinacy in your character as well as Miss Annabel. You weren't your poor Papa's son for nothing." "I don't call doing what you think will make other people happy exactly obstinacy, Ponty," I pleaded. "Call it what you like, Master Reggie, but that's what it is. Folks always find pretty pet names for their own particular faults. There was a man at Poppenhall who prided himself upon what he called his firmness, and impulsiveness, and economy: those were the pet names he used: and yet all the village knew that he was nothing but an obstinate, ill-tempered old miser."