"Dr. Roberts said that Mildred needed to be taken out of herself; if _you_ don't go in for it, _she_ won't. Oh, I should say yes. It is sure to be a lot of fun, you know." "I don't think that Mildred and I care much for fun," demurred Amy. However, the Misses Findon attended the rehearsals--with the dramatic instinct possessed by pasteboard figures on a toy stage. And blankly their stepmother noted that, though young men were ambitious of "polishing their scenes" in alcoves, at various hours, with other girls, no young man's histrionic fervour urged him to any spontaneous polishing with Mildred or Amy. The thing that did happen at Harrogate was unlooked-for: a man displayed considerable interest in Mrs. Findon herself. They had spoken first in the hall, where he was sitting when she came out of the breakfast-room with the girls one morning; and on subsequent mornings they had all loitered for ten minutes in the hall; and then, when the rehearsals prevented Mildred and Amy from loitering, she had paused awhile without them. One day, when the rehearsal took place after luncheon, she was surprised to find that she had sat talking to him the whole afternoon. But though their tone had long since grown informal and they talked spontaneously, though he had told her he was in the last fortnight of his leave from India and spoken of his prospects of a judgeship there, she did not realise how far their acquaintance had progressed until he said to her, "You don't look like a happy woman, and yet it doesn't sound to me as if your husband had been all the world to you. If it isn't the loss of your husband that's weighing on you, what's the matter?" She gazed at him, startled. And still stranger to her than the boldness of his question, was the intimacy of her reply, after she had made it. "Mr. Murray, I'm _not_ a happy woman." From that moment they were not acquaintances--they were friends. Piecemeal he learnt her story, and perceived the weakness of her character. And their confidences were more frequent and prolonged after a hurried letter from Aunt Harriet, saying that "her dear boy had passed away, and that it would help her to bear her cross if dear Mildred and Amy would go to her for two or three days." A week slid by, and they were with her still. And meanwhile Mr. Murray and Mrs. Findon fell in love with each other.