Then he came over and stood beside her. “Lizabeth, if there’s anything I can do—any sort or kind of thing—you’re to let me know. You will, won’t you? You’re the best thing in my world, and anything that I can do for you would be the best day’s work I ever did. If you’ll just clamp on to that we shall be all right.” Elizabeth looked up, but before she could speak, he bent down, kissed her hastily on the cheek, and went out of the room. Elizabeth put her face in her hands and cried. “I suppose Louis has been proposing to you again,” was Agneta’s rather cross comment. “Lizabeth, what on earth are you crying for?” “Oh, Neta, do you hate me?” said Elizabeth in a very tired voice. Agneta knelt down beside her, and began to pinch her arm. “I would if I could, but I can’t,” she observed viciously. “I’ve tried, of course, but I can’t do it by myself, and it’s not the sort of thing you can expect religion to be any help in. As if you didn’t know that Louis and I simply love your littlest finger-nail, and that we’d do anything for you, and that we think it an _honour_ to be your friends, and—oh, Lizabeth, if you don’t stop crying this very instant, I shall pour all the water out of that big flower-vase down the back of your neck!” CHAPTER VIII EDWARD SINGS “What ails you, Andrew, my man’s son, That you should look so white, That you should neither eat by day, Nor take your rest by night?” “I have no rest when I would sleep, No peace when I would rise, Because of Janet’s yellow hair, Because of Janet’s eyes.” When Elizabeth Chantrey returned to Market Harford, she did so with quite a clear understanding of the difficulties that lay before her. Edward had spoken to her of his uncle’s wishes, and begged her to fulfil them by remaining on in the old house as his and Mary’s guest. Apparently it never occurred to him that the situation presented any difficulty, or that few women would find it agreeable to be guest where they had been mistress. Elizabeth was under no illusions. She knew that she was putting herself in an almost impossible position, but she had made up her mind to occupy that position for a year. She had given David Blake so much already, that a little more did not seem to matter. Another year, a little more pain, were all in the day’s work. She had given many years and had suffered much pain. Through the years, through the pain, there had been at the back of her mind the thought, “If he needed me, and I were not here.” Elizabeth had always known that some day he would need her—not love her—but need her. And for that she waited.