Lucy had not only her good news to relate, but she actually had something to show. The _Slains Castle_ had stayed for a few days at a certain port, and Charlie had sat for a photograph, which he sent home in his letter. It might not be much as a work of art or science, for the posing was all wrong and the chemicals were manifestly bad. Yet next to Hugh himself it was the very dearest thing in Lucy’s present possession, so satisfactory was its assurance of the beloved wanderer’s renewed strength and energy. Where were the wasted form and the wan countenance which had hitherto haunted Lucy’s memories of her husband? They had vanished, and thus the poor little photograph had cheered Lucy as not even Charlie’s letters had done. For in those he might have been trying “to make the best of things”—to dwell on every trifling improvement, so as to cheer and uphold her in her loneliness. That fear had often haunted her, basing itself on her own silence concerning Pollie’s defection, which silence she had kept intact, “for fear of worrying him.” The shock which Mrs. Morison’s breakdown had given her, when on the eve of revelation, had restrained her from any further attempt at confidence on this matter. This reticence and its motive naturally made her dread some corresponding reticence on her husband’s part. The little portrait set that suspicion at rest. So it had its place in the centre of the dining-room mantelshelf, and was provided with a dainty little frame—the only “article of luxury” which Lucy had bought since Charlie’s departure. Mrs. Bray went off gratified and elate. She loved to play the part of fairy godmother, though when she was defeated in that—as when the death of Rachel’s lover prevented her from overwhelming her maid with marriage gifts—she was apt to turn unsympathetic and cynical. She prolonged her visit to the little house with the verandah and had to give up two or three other calls she had arranged in the same neighbourhood. She drove off saying to herself with a full consciousness of the humour of the reflection— “Now I feel good; I could be always good if I was in a world of good people and was able to straighten out every tangle I saw.”