We are often blamed for not speaking out as soon as a doubt enters our mind, yet oftentimes the reticence which such a doubt begets is a saving grace which redeems and sanctifies our whole character. It was with quite a cheerful countenance that Regina went through the rest of her day's work. Arriving home at Ye Dene in time for dinner she changed her dress for a cool and light tea-gown, in which, I am bound to confess, she looked more than anything like a gigantic perambulating baby's bassinette. She laved her face with a little scented water, and, for the first time in her life, she dusted her countenance with a little powder. She did not herself possess such things as a powder-box and puff, but in Maudie's deserted bedroom she found on her dressing-table the one which she had used up to the morning of her marriage, for she had naturally taken with her on her wedding-tour the smartly fitted dressing-case which had been among her husband's wedding presents to her. It was with quite unaccustomed hands that Regina sought for the powder-box, and she used the powder too thickly. Maudie had had a pretty taste in powder, and prided herself on never using a common kind. Being so very fair she used that of a pure white tint, and when Mrs. Whittaker had finished her application of it I must confess she looked ghastly. "How dreadful!" her thoughts ran. "How can women ever use this stuff?" Then she took a towel from the towel-rail and rubbed her face vigorously, shook the puff out of the window, and started again, succeeding this time in merely making herself of a delicate pallor. As she descended the stairs her husband turned in at the gate and came along the covered way to the porch. He noticed at once that there was something unusual in her appearance. "Well, Regina, my love," he remarked, "have you been grilling in town this hot day?" "Yes, I have been to town, Alfred," she replied, trying hard to make her tone quite an ordinary one. "You must have over-tired yourself, my dear; you are as pale as a sheet," he remarked, looking at her keenly. "Here, come with me." He led the way into the dining-room, that large, cool, pleasant apartment in which Regina had so often sat admiring him, and, going to the sideboard, poured her out a glass of port. "Here, drink this down at once. I am sure you have been over-doing it. Have you been to any of those beastly meetings?" "I have not been to a meeting, though I looked in at the offices of the S.R.W." "I feel very much inclined to say 'Damn the S.R.W.,'" said Alfred Whittaker, warmly. "I can't bear to see you looking so jaded and worn-out as you do now. Here, drink this down; it will pull you together better than anything else." He was an old-fashioned man, who believed in a glass of port, and Regina, with unwonted meekness and the same happy feeling of being ministered to that she had felt in the pastry-cook's shop, obediently swallowed the pleasant potion.