became
imperceptible, and the long imprisonment almost unendurable. He knew of
the fever that would lurk in the quickening blood, of the torturing cramp
that would draw the unused muscles, of the depression that was its mental
counterpart, of the black despair that would hang like a paralysing
weight upon soul and body, of the _ennui_, of the weariness of life, of
the piteous weakness that nothing could alleviate.

He had to a certain extent warned Lucas what to expect; but the time for
these things had not yet arrived. He was hardly yet past the first stage,
and his courage was buoyed up by high hopes as yet undashed. He had faced
worse things without blenching, and he had not begun to feel the monotony
that Capper had dreaded as his worst enemy.

He took a keen interest in the doings of the young couple at the Dower
House, and Dot's breezy presence was ever welcome.

As for Anne, she went to and fro between Baronmead and the Manor, of
which her husband's will had left her sole mistress, no longer leading a
hermit's life, no longer clinging to her solitude, grave and quiet, but
not wholly unhappy. Those few words Capper had spoken on the day of
Lucas's operation had made a marvellous difference to her outlook. They
had made it possible for her to break down the prison-walls that
surrounded her. They had given her strength to leave the past behind her,
all vain regrets and cruel disillusionments, to put away despair and rise
above depression. They had given her courage to go on.

Of Nap no word was ever spoken in her presence. He might have been dead,
so completely had he dropped out of her life. In fact, he was scarcely
ever mentioned by anyone, a fact which aroused in Dot a curiously keen
indignation, but upon which a certain shyness kept her from commenting.
She kept him faithfully in mind, praying for him as regularly as she
prayed for old Squinny, who still lingered on with exasperating tenacity,
and continued to enjoy such help, spiritual or otherwise, as he could
extract from the parson's daughter.

That Bertie strongly disapproved of his brother she was aware, but she
held no very high opinion of Bertie's judgment, though even he could
scarcely have forbidden her to pray for the black sheep of the family.
She had not been brought up to rely upon anyone's judgment but her own,
and, deeply as she loved him, she could not help regarding her husband
as headlong and inclined to prejudice. He was young, she reflec