found a ready friend in her; but while thus gracious to all the lesser things that shared her place in time, this girl revealed for humanity, beyond her brother, but little love. She was zealous for him, but to other men she stood as heretofore: in an attitude enigmatic, tending to aloofness. Margaret, however, had yet to be convinced that she was not to be won. To women Rhoda’s aspect of late was made more widely manifest. Out of her own virginal fount of feeling no drop of sympathy with the unvirginal could flow; and the thing that Dorcas had accomplished was above all measure infamous, treacherous to womankind, beyond hope of pardon in her eyes. Had the power to do so rested with Rhoda, she had swept her sister out of life; and in her mind this yielding wanton, and her husband, and her new-born baby were already as objects dead and banished from existence. Margaret’s thoughts now centred on Rhoda and she lost sight of her own misty tribulations. Two great problems awaited solution, and with the optimism of a large heart this woman hoped yet to solve them. She wanted to see Rhoda a wife; and she wanted to see her reconciled to Dorcas. The one achievement might depend upon the other. Let Rhoda once wed, and there must come understanding into her life. Margaret had spoken often, with tact and warmth, of Bartley Crocker; and she had been helped in a very valuable quarter, as it seemed, for David also considered the man as among his closest friends at this season. There had recently been some talk between them of a sort specially interesting to David, for Bartley was attracted, or declared himself attracted, by the prospect of leaving England to farm in Canada, and the information he had gathered together respecting that wider world of the Colonies could not fail to be of interest to Bowden. At David’s invitation Bartley had spent a Sunday afternoon recently at ’Meavy Cot’; and Madge was now at Crazywell to tell the lover what had followed his visit. She waited yet half an hour; then Bartley appeared on the hither bank of the pool, looked about him a while, caught sight of Madge’s sunbonnet, and approached her. So busy with her own thoughts was she that she did not see him until he was beside her: then she rose and bade him find some shade. "The sun’s that fierce I must get out of it," she said. Thereupon he took her to a little glen close at hand--a lip through which the pool sometimes overflowed in winter--and under a white-thorn they sat down together, while Margaret, looking at the golden furzes in front of her, spoke to him. "I do believe the gorse be going brown already. Just a little gladness we get from it, then ’tis gone again, like a candle blown out."