ning for anything that might break
the silence downstairs. No sound came to them; that poignant silence was
continued throughout long, long minutes, while the two listeners
stood there under its mysterious spell; and in its plaintive
eloquence--speaking, as it did, of the figure alone in the big,
dark library, where dead Wilbur's new silver frame gleamed in the
dimness--there was something that checked even George.

Above the aunt and nephew, as they kept this strange vigil, there was
a triple window of stained glass, to illumine the landing and upper
reaches of the stairway. Figures in blue and amber garments posed
gracefully in panels, conceived by some craftsman of the Eighties to
represent Love and Purity and Beauty, and these figures, leaded to
unalterable attitudes, were little more motionless than the two human
beings upon whom fell the mottled faint light of the window. The colours
were growing dull; evening was coming on.

Fanny Minafer broke the long silence with a sound from her throat, a
stilled gasp; and with that great companion of hers, her handkerchief,
retired softly to the loneliness of her own chamber. After she had gone
George looked about him bleakly, then on tiptoe crossed the hall and
went into his own room, which was filled with twilight. Still tiptoeing,
though he could not have said why, he went across the room and sat down
heavily in a chair facing the window. Outside there was nothing but the
darkening air and the wall of the nearest of the new houses. He had
not slept at all, the night before, and he had eaten nothing since the
preceding day at lunch, but he felt neither drowsiness nor hunger. His
set determination filled him, kept him but too wide awake, and his gaze
at the grayness beyond the window was wide--eyed and bitter.

Darkness had closed in when there was a step in the room behind him.
Then someone knelt beside the chair, two arms went round him with
infinite compassion, a gentle head rested against his shoulder, and
there came the faint scent as of apple-blossoms far away.

"You mustn't be troubled, darling," his mother whispered.

Chapter XXVI

George choked. For an instant he was on the point of breaking down, but
he commanded himself, bravely dismissing the self-pity roused by her
compassion. "How can I help but be?" he said.

"No, no." She soothed him. "You mustn't. You mustn't be troubled, no
matter what happens."

"That's easy enough to say!" he protested;