Angela spent some days in idle dreaming, not the delicious dreams which usually come of idleness, but dreams painful and perplexing. She wrote long letters to Neville which she destroyed as soon as they were written, for they were all a reflex of Isabey. She had placed upon her dressing table a daguerreotype of Neville which he had given her a year or two before. She took it up, looked at it dutifully half a dozen times a day. How dear was Neville, if only she were not married to him, and but for that awkward fact how freely she could have talked with him about Isabey; but now because Neville was her husband there were things she could never mention to him! It was some days before she recovered her balance. It was, however, no time to be idle at Harrowby, for Mrs. Tremaine had undertaken to equip a field hospital for Richard Tremaine’s battery of artillery. She contributed to this most of her linen sheets and pillowcases, and organized a household brigade of maids and seamstresses to scrape into lint all the pieces of old linen to be found. Angela did her part with readiness and energy. And, as the case always is, work steadied her mind and her composure. Her heart and soul were growing by leaps and bounds, and in a month she progressed as far as she would have done in a year ordinarily. She wrote a letter to Neville regularly once a week and gave it to Lyddon, who contrived to get it to the British Consul at Norfolk, through whom it was forwarded, and she heard once or twice during the month from Neville. He wrote her that he knew not from day to day where he would be, and was kept on the wing continually. Nor could he fix any time when there would be a chance of her joining him, but that of one thing she might be certain, he would not delay an hour in sending for her when it should be possible for him to have her. In these letters he always mentioned his father and mother with the deepest affection and without resentment. Angela read those parts of his letters to Mrs. Tremaine, who listened in cold silence, but who repeated them to Colonel Tremaine when the father and mother alone together made silent lament over the disgrace of their eldest-born.