"Yes; they have caught the fever. But they are young, as you see; they have taken it in time. Some day they'll be tired of wandering, and they'll settle down in a house of their own, over here in England, and be dear little wives and mothers." "Eileen and Ermyntrude--by the way, I never know which is Eileen and which is Ermyntrude. And you, will you never be tired of wandering?" She looked at him with the lucid, penetrating gaze he knew so well. "Never. I took the fever when I was--not young, and it goes harder with you then. There's no hope for me; I shall never be cured." She rose and joined the Manbys. The little girls ran to meet her, they clung to her skirts and danced round her; she put her arm round Ermyntrude, the younger, and Durant saw her winding her long fingers in and out of the golden hair, and looking down into the child's face, Madonna-like, with humid, tender, maternal eyes. He thought of her as the mother of Manby's children, and he hated the little girls. There was a voice at his elbow. "Isn't she splendid?" Miss Chatterton had seated herself in Frida's chair. Her presence brought him instantaneous relief. He had been glad to meet Miss Chatterton again. Not that he would have known her, for time had not dealt very kindly with the young girl. Her face, from overmuch play of expression, showed a few little wrinkles already, her complexion had suffered the fate of sanguine complexions, it had not gone altogether, but it was going--fast, the color was beginning to run. But time had not subdued her extravagant spirits or touched her imperishable mirth. In spite of a lapse of five years she gave him a pleasant sense of continuity; she took him up exactly where she had put him down, on the platform of the little wayside station of Whithorn-in-Arden. Unlike Frida, Miss Chatterton had not developed. When she began to talk she had the air of merely continuing their last important conversation. "Didn't I tell you how she'd come out if she got her chance?" "You did." "And wasn't I right?" "You were." "But you oughtn't to have needed telling, you ought to have seen it for yourself." "Right again. I ought to have seen it for myself." "He who will not when he may will live to fight another day; isn't that how it goes on?" "Yes; I congratulate you on your work." "It isn't my work, lord bless you! nor yours, either--_there_ I was wrong." "What is it, then?" Miss Chatterton stared out over the sea and into the universal air. "Why, it's--it's everything! Of course you did something, so did I. But if it comes to that, the present Mrs. Tancred did more than either of us. We couldn't have married the Colonel." "Then you think that was the reason why she----" "I do, indeed. She could have had no other. You see she was awfully fond of Frida. And, what's more, she was fond of you." It was his turn to look out over the sea.