"I ride to a tourney with sordid things, They grant no quarter, but what care I? * * * * * I have bartered and begged, I have cheated and lied, But now, however the battle betide, Uncowed by the clamour, I ride ride, ride!" VICTOR STARBUCK. Joan did not see Aunt Janet again. Miss Abercrombie carried messages backwards and forwards between the two, but even Miss Abercrombie's level-headed arguments could not move Aunt Janet from the position she had taken up. And Miss Abercrombie was quite able to realize how much her old friend was suffering. "I never knew a broken heart could bring so much pain," she told Joan; "but every time I look at your aunt I realize that physical suffering is as nothing compared to the torture of her thoughts." "Why cannot she try to understand. Let me go to her," Joan pleaded. "If only I can speak to her I shall make her understand." But Miss Abercrombie shook her head. "No, child," she said, "it would be quite useless and under the circumstances you must respect her wishes. I am fearfully sorry for both of you; I know that it is hurting you, too, but when you have wilfully or inadvertently killed a person's belief in you the only thing you can do is to keep out of their way. Time is the one healer for such wounds." The tears smarted in Joan's eyes, yet up till now she had not cried once. Hurt pride, hurt love, struggled for expression, but words seemed so useless. "I had better hurry up and get away," she said; "I suppose Aunt Janet hates the thought of my being near her even." Miss Abercrombie watched her with kindly eyes. The tragedy she had suspected on the first night was worse even than she had imagined. It stared at her out of the old, fierce face upstairs, it slipped into her thoughts of what this girl's future was going to be. "Have you made any plans?" she asked; "do you know at all where to go?" "Does it matter very much?" Joan answered bitterly. "My dear," Miss Abercrombie spoke gently, "I am making no attempt to criticize, and I certainly have no right to judge, but you have a very hard fight before you and you will not win through if you go into it in that spirit. I do not want to ask questions, you would probably resent them, but will you tell me one thing. Does the man know about what is going to happen?" "No," answered Joan. "It wouldn't make any difference if he did. It is not even as if he had persuaded me to go and live with him; I want you to understand that I went of my own free will because I thought it was right." "You will write and tell him," suggested Miss Abercrombie. "That is only fair to him and yourself." "No," Joan said again, "it was the one thing he was most afraid of; I would not stoop to ask him to share it with me."