e Maude was threading
beads; and the two others, much younger, stood looking on--Reginald
and Anne. Lady Margaret Cooper, having a fellow-feeling for an invalid,
sat near the sick boy. Lord Hartledon sat apart at a table reading, and
making occasional notes. The dowager, more cumbersome than ever, dozed on
the other side of the hearth. She was falling into the habit of taking a
nap after luncheon as well as after dinner. Lady Laura was in danger of
convulsions every time she looked at the dowager. Never in all her life
had she seen so queer an old figure. She and Anne stood together at an
open window, the one eagerly asking questions, the other answering, all
in undertones. Lady Laura had been away from her own home and kindred
some twelve years, and it seemed to her half a lifetime.

"Anne, how _was_ it?" she exclaimed. "It was a thing that always puzzled
me, and I never came to the bottom of it. My husband said at the time I
used to talk of it in my sleep."

"What do you mean?"

"About you and Val. You were engaged to each other; you loved him, and he
loved you. How came that other marriage about?"

"Well, I can hardly tell you. I was at Cannes with mamma, and he fell
into the meshes. We knew nothing about it until they were married. Never
mind all that now; I don't care to recall it, and it is a very sore point
with Val. The blame, I believe, lay chiefly with _her_."

Anne glanced at the dowager, to indicate whom she meant. Lady Laura's
eyes followed the same direction, and she laughed.

"A painted old guy! She looks like one who would do it. Why doesn't some
one put her under a glass case and take her to the British Museum? When
news of the marriage came out to India I was thunderstruck. I wrote off
at once to Val, asking all sorts of questions, and received quite a
savage reply, telling me to mind my own business. That letter alone would
have told me how Val repented; it was so unlike him. Do you know what I
did?"

"What did you do?"

"Sent him another letter by return mail with only two words in
it--'Elster's Folly.' Poor Val! She died of heart-disease, did she not?"

"Yes. But she seemed to have been ailing for some time. She was greatly
changed."

"Val is changed. There are threads of silver in his hair; and he is so
much quieter than I thought he ever would be. I wonder you took him,
Anne, after all; and I wonder still more that Dr. Ashton allowed it."

A blush tinged Lady Hartledon's face as she l