"Winifred," she exclaimed, "that is going too far. Whatever he is _not_, he is certainly not a mean hypocrite. You can't think that for-- for any selfish or interested motives, he would _pretend_ to care for you? He couldn't." "No, no, I don't think him the least of a hypocrite," said Winifred, eagerly. "You don't understand, Celia. He _thinks_ he does, quite honestly. He's always been put in the position--not told he _must_ care for me, for, of course, with a man of any spirit or principle that would only drive him the other way. And Lennox has plenty of principle and spirit too, of a kind. But he has been tacitly told he _does_, and so he has come to believe it." Celia looked extremely perplexed. This was a new light indeed upon the subject, but a light which seemed, at first at any rate, only to increase the already existing perplexity. "If--if you think _that_," she said at last, "I don't wonder at what you always say about him. I mean about it all. Not that I don't sympathise with you--I do, as you know. I _couldn't_ imagine being in love with Lennox;" and she smiled to herself, as it were, at the very thought. "But I always thought it must make a great difference if a girl knows a man is very devoted to _her_, you know." "Oh," said Winifred, in her very off-hand way, "as far as that goes, I _think_ I could stand Lennox better if I knew he did not care much for me," which paradoxical speech gave her younger sister considerable food for reflection. And before Celia spoke again, Winifred dismissed the subject in her high-handed fashion, quite ignoring the fact that it was she herself, and she alone, who had started the conversation. "You really must not chatter or let me chatter any more, Celia," she said. "I must get my letter written." And for the best part of an hour there was no sound to be heard but the scratching of their pens--of Winifred's pen alone after a while, for Celia's correspondence was confined to her sister Louise, while Miss Maryon, once she had got her hand in, so to say, went on writing long after her rather short and not very graphic letter to her mother was finished. For she was a young woman of great energy and almost perfect physical condition. It was quite true, as she had declared to Mrs Balderson, that she was not "the very least tired." She looked up suddenly, when she had closed and addressed her fourth envelope. "It must be getting rather late," she said. "Shall I ring for our letters to be taken down, do you think, Celia? They are not in time for to-night's mail, but still, if posted now, they will get to Barleyfield for the afternoon delivery to-morrow."