"I do envy you," she said pathetically, "all that background of home companionship. We were brought up so differently. It was not my parents' fault of course--" she added rather quickly. Something in Lionel's expression warned her that he would be unsympathetic to confidences against parents. "Well, you've got Winn," he said, looking at her with his steadfast encouraging eyes, "you've got your background now." He was prepared to put up with a little ecstasy on this subject, but Estelle looked away from him, her great eyes strangely wistful and absorbed. She was an extraordinary exquisite and pretty little person, like a fairy on a Christmas tree, or a Dresden china shepherdess, not a bit, somehow, like a wife. "Yes," she said, twisting her wedding ring round her tiny manicured finger. "But sometimes I am a little anxious about him--I know it's silly of me." Lionel's shyness fell away from him with disconcerting suddenness. "Why are you anxious?" he demanded. "What do you mean, Mrs. Winn?" Estelle hesitated, she hadn't meant to say exactly what her fear was, she only wanted to arouse the young man's chivalry and to talk in some way that approached intimacy. Everything must have a beginning, even Petrarch and Laura. She found Lionel's eyes fixed upon her with a piercing quality difficult to meet. He obviously wouldn't understand if she didn't mean anything--and she hardly knew him well enough to touch on her real difficulties with Winn, those would have to come later. But she must be anxious about something--she was forced into the rather meager track of her husband's state of health. "I don't quite know," she mused, "of course he seems perfectly strong--but I sometimes wonder if he is as strong as he looks." Lionel brushed her wonder aside. "Please tell me exactly what you've noticed," he said, as if he were a police sergeant and she were some reluctant and slightly prevaricating witness. She hadn't, as a matter of fact, noticed anything. "He sometimes looks terribly tired," she said a little uncertainly, "but I dare say it's all my foolishness, Mr. Drummond. I am afraid I am inclined to be nervous about other people's health--" Estelle sighed softly. She often accused herself of faults which no one had discovered in her. "Winn, I am sure, would be the first to laugh at me." "Yes, I dare say he would," said Lionel quietly. "But I never will, Mrs. Winn." She raised her eyes gratefully to him--at last she had succeeded in touching him. "You see," Lionel explained, "I care too much for him myself." Her eyes dropped. She had a feeling that Petrarch and Laura had hardly begun like that.