eard. I'll tell
nobody else. The old attitude toward the rest! It's really no use
telling--I can't tell it right; I can't put it into words. For myself
even I can't recover the past--can't quite see how I did it--what woman
I was then, or how that woman stands to the woman I am now. A mist has
come between the two."

"For Heaven's sake, vex yourself no more! Let the dead bury its dead.
Alison has upset you."

"I'm in the mist--but Leonard isn't. He grows clearer and clearer, and"
(she smiled faintly) "larger and larger. His great kind loving-roughness
fills all my vision. I suppose it filled all my vision then, and so--it
happened!" She turned to me with a quick question. "Do you think I'm
right in the determination I've come to about myself?"

"I should be far from holding it obligatory either on you or on anyone
else. Good things pass by--and things indifferent--and things bad. The
disturbance passes off the face of life's stream; the stream pursues its
course. There's no duty on you, in my opinion. Yet I think that for
yourself you're right."

"I'm glad you do," she told me. "At that we'll leave it--a fixed point!"

"Unless Lord Fillingford is very obstinate?"

As she looked at me, a smile broke slowly over her face. "From the way
you say that, I think you suspect me of having indulged in a little
bluff this afternoon. But I think I was honest. I don't mean to do it, I
should hate doing it--but they might make me angry enough."

"I don't believe you'd ever go through with it. We should have flight
again!"

"Too awful!" sighed Jenny, frowning, yet almost smiling. She smiled
frankly the next moment, as she turned to me and laid her hand on my
arm. "Do let's agree--you and I--that I'm quite incapable of it and was
bluffing most audaciously!"

"We'll agree to that with all my heart."

"So you spoil me--so you go on spoiling me!" she said very gently.

I went down the hill to my own house, leaving her still sitting there, a
stately solitary figure, revolving many thoughts in the depths of her
mind.

CHAPTER XXIII

ON ALL GROUNDS--RIDICULOUS!

Alison was prompt as could be wished. The next morning we received our
orders. Margaret was to go to tea with him at the Church House, escorted
either by Chat or by me, as Jenny preferred. He expected that some
business would bring Fillingford there about five--and so the encounter;
for the result of it, he added, he took no sort of responsibility.

"You m