"I really think so, and I don't need to draw you out," he replied. "I know exactly what you mean about Lennox, and--you needn't pity him. It will be all right." "Oh, I am afraid not," said Celia. "I'm afraid it will never come right. I didn't know you knew about it, but as you do--no," and her voice dropped almost to a whisper, "Winifred will _never_ care for him. I see it more and more, and now she is thinking all sorts of things-- quite differently, you know." "Indeed," said Eric, raising his eyebrows in inquiry, "do you mean--is there--some other more fortunate person in the field?" "No, no, not that at all," said Celia. "Winifred has much higher ideas than most girls. She wants to make a path for herself--to feel that she is doing something with her life--and she must be right. Why should girls be condemned to do and be nothing? A young man without a profession is always considered the greatest mistake. Why should women be forced into leading idle and useless lives?" "They never should be," said Eric, "I quite agree with you. But there are considerations: if a girl _does_ marry, you will allow that she finds her work cut out for her--her vocation or profession, or whatever you like to call it. And I do not think any woman has a right to cast herself adrift from the _chances_ of marrying, so to say; she should allow herself fair-play." Celia gave her head the tiniest of tosses. "Winifred does not want to marry, and she is old enough to judge," she said. "I don't deny--well, honestly, I should have been very happy if she had married Lennox, that is to say; if she could have cared for him. It would have pleased a good many people, and--did you ever hear the legend of White Turrets?" she went on, dropping her voice, and looking half-frightened at herself. "No," said Eric, with interest. "I've heard something about its being haunted, like nearly all very old houses, but I never heard of any legend." "Ah, well, there is one. It and the ghost are mixed up together," said Celia, still in a slightly awe-struck tone. "It--_she_ is supposed to be the spirit of an ancestress of ours, who was cruelly treated because she had no son. She had two or three daughters, and she died soon after the last was born, and she left a sort of a curse. No," with a little shudder, "I don't like to call it that. It was more like a--" "A prophecy," suggested Eric. "Yes," said Celia, her face clearing, "it was more like that. It was to warn her descendants that the luck, so to say, should run in the female line, and that whenever a man was the owner of the place, the Maryons might--" "Look out for squalls," Eric could not resist adding. Celia glanced at him half indignantly. "If you're laughing at me," she said, "I won't tell it you." "I beg your pardon, I do really," he said, penitently. "It was only that I did not like to see you looking so solemn about it."