It was the way of the Waynfletes to hide their real selves from each other as carefully as if each one had been plotting treason. They erected quickset hedges round their hearts and souls, as if to be misunderstood was needful to their self-respect. Guy said no more, and withdrew, and he never spoke a word to Godfrey of what had passed between his aunt and himself. The next day, just before luncheon, Jeanie was gathering flowers on the lawn, when a door in the wall that led to the mills opened, and Guy dashed in, with so white and wild a look, and a step at once so hurried and so faltering, that she ran up to him, exclaiming-- "Guy! Are you ill? What is the matter?" Guy looked at her, as she said afterwards, as if he did not see her, and hurried in and upstairs without a word, and as she followed, scared and puzzled, she heard him shut and lock his bedroom door behind him. Turning away in distress and alarm, she met Godfrey strolling along in the sunshine, with Rawdie at his heels, and a book under his arm, a picture of idle holiday enjoyment. "Oh," he said, in answer to her appeal, "Guy is like that if he has a headache. He likes to be let alone; he never wants anything." Jeanie still looked doubtful. "People don't generally look so with a headache," she said. "Does he often have such bad ones?" "No," said Godfrey; "only once in a way. He'll be all right in an hour or two. Let him alone." Jeanie thought it a very odd headache; but no more was said, though, from Mrs Waynflete's face when Guy did not appear at luncheon, it might have been argued that his sudden illness told against his plans. She put on her bonnet, and took her way down to the mill with a step that was still firm, though slower than of old, and asked for John Cooper. She was no unusual visitor, and had never let her hold of the business drop; and as she sat down in the little office, and cast her still keen blue eyes round her, it was more than ever difficult to believe, more than ever distasteful to feel, that her day was almost done. The two old men who had long managed the business, though some years younger than herself, now seemed like contemporaries. She had worked under their fathers in her girlhood, she had seen them rise in office under her husband, she had now worked with them for many years, and with them she felt at one. Partly from this, and partly, perhaps, from the incautiousness of old age, before many minutes had passed, she had made John Cooper aware, both of Guy's plans and of his strictures. It was so natural to discuss the crude ideas of the youth with her experienced old friend. John Cooper was very much taken by surprise. The reticent and cautious Guy had never betrayed how carefully he had been "takin' notes." Had this lad really put his finger on the weak places? John Cooper was much too careful to commit himself to a direct contradiction.