And I'm going to
be so good, you'll hardly know me. I won't go out in the rain, and I
won't do the Clothing Club accounts, and I won't overwork. And--and--I
won't be cross, even if I do look and feel hideous. I'm going to be a
perfect saint, Bertie."

"Sweetheart!" he said again.

She turned her face up against his neck. "Shall I tell you why?" she
said, clinging to him with hands that trembled. "It's because if I let
myself get cross-grained and ugly now, p'r'aps someone else--some
day--will be cross-grained and ugly too. And I should never forgive
myself for that. I should always feel it was my fault. Fancy if it turned
out a shrew like me, Bertie! Wouldn't--wouldn't it be dreadful?"

She was half-laughing, half-crying, as she whispered the words. Bertie's
arms held her so closely that she almost gasped for breath.

"My precious girl!" he said. "My own precious wife! Is it so? You know, I
wondered."

She turned her lips quickly to his. There were tears on her cheeks though
she was laughing.

"How bright of you, Bertie! You--you always get there sooner or later,
don't you? And you're not cross with me any more? You don't think me very
unreasonable about Nap?"

"Oh, damn Nap!" said Bertie, for the second time, with fervour.

"Poor Nap!" said Dot gently.

That evening, when Bertie was at Baronmead, she scribbled a single
sentence on a sheet of paper, thrust it into an envelope and directed it
to the Phoenix Club, New York.

This done, she despatched a servant to the postoffice with it and sat
down before the fire.

"I expect it was wrong of me," she said. "But somehow I can't help
feeling he ought to know. Anyway"--Dot's English was becoming lightly
powdered with Americanisms, which possessed a very decided charm on her
lips--"anyway, it's done, and I won't think any more about it. It's the
very last wrong thing I'll do for--ever so long." Her eyes grew soft as
she uttered this praiseworthy resolution. She gazed down into the fire
with a little smile, and gave herself up to dreams.

CHAPTER V

THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND

"O God, give me rest!"

Painfully the words came through quivering lips, the first they had
uttered for hours. Lucas Errol lay, as he had lain for nearly three
months, with his face to the ceiling, his body stretched straight and
rigid, ever in the same position, utterly helpless and weary unto death.

Day after day he lay there, never stirring save when they made him bend
his k