As to the young men, she liked them well enough. They were noisy, to be sure; but, then, might not others say the same with justice of Nell and Marjory? "I’m ashamed of their boisterousness sometimes," the good lady admitted. "I’m sure I was never like that when I was a girl, and what happiness they can find in it, I don’t know. Believe me, Mrs. Kennaird, they never are at rest. When it’s not skating and sliding, it’s golf and hockey. If you ask them to read a book, they think you want to do them an injury. I gave Marjory the ’Pilgrim’s Progress’ on her last birthday, and all she said was that ’Christian won on the last green.’ There’s levity for you—there’s improper behaviour. Oh, I shall be sorry to lose them, but sorrier still for the man who marries them—indeed I shall. You couldn’t understand it yourself, for you have no daughters of your own, they tell me; but I’ve a mother’s heart, and they wound it every day that I live. Oh, yes, I shall be sorry for the man who marries them." Lily smiled, but did not comment upon the grammar of the observation, or its suggestions. The situation was now quite plain to her. Here was a good woman who would enter the holy bonds for the second time, one who found a serious obstacle in the presence of these hoydens who proclaimed their mother’s age _urbi et orbi_. Little it mattered to her whether the worldly prospects of likely suitors were good or ill. Lily perceived that the boys were already married, so far as Mrs. Rider was concerned, and she determined to push the suggestion no further. So she led the conversation to more general topics, and finally turned to Dr. Orange, who had been waiting for an opportunity to speak to her. Lily confessed to the doctor that she had come out with the intention of doing a little shopping in the village of Andana, and he, with ready gallantry, offered to accompany her thither. His art in mundane affairs was considerable, and no one who overheard their talk would have guessed that he knew this lady’s story to the last line. Not until the narrow path carried them to the heart of the wood by the Sanatorium did he begin to speak of intimate affairs at all, and then in so general a way that it was impossible not to be frank with him. "By the way," he said—joining her after the passage of a bob sleigh steered by that dashing pilot, Keith Rivers, who rarely broke his collar-bone more than twice in any season—"by the way, do you know a person of the name of Paul Lecroix—I think he is a gentleman’s servant, and has been staying at Andana, recently—do you know anything of him?" Lily guessed the object of the question and would not fence with it. "Yes," she said in a low voice, "he was my husband’s valet; what of him, Dr. Orange?" The doctor continued as though it were an ordinary affair.