o be said.
Cassandra winced as she imagined Bernard's bluff words to his son: "Look
here, boy, never speak of your mother again. She's not coming back.
Some day you'll understand; until then do as you're told, and keep your
mouth shut. She's dead. D'you understand that? Dead and buried so far
as concerns us. Never speak of her again."

Bernard would not abuse a mother to her son, his sense of fair play was
too strong; he would simply shut her out from his life, and leave the
boy to form his own judgment later on. But with the sharpness of
dawning adolescence Bernard junior would sense something wrong,
something shameful, flush unhappily beneath the servants' gaze, and
return to school miserably dreading that the fellows had heard!

No! Cassandra could not do it. She could not shame her child. She
could not step down from the pedestal on which the most prosaic of sons
instinctively places a mother. Every fresh struggle ended in the same
most piteous, most womanly cry: "I can't. I can't. But oh, Dane, Dane,
I _want to_!"

During these three days Cassandra stayed entirely within the grounds and
denied herself to visitors, but she had a constant terror that Teresa
would call and force an interview. The girl must suspect some such
meeting as had taken place in the summer-house; must realise that her
own fate hung in the balance. What more natural than that she should
want to plead her own cause? Cassandra stiffened in anticipation.
Nothing, she knew, would induce such a reckless disregard of duty as to
hear it advocated from Teresa's lips. For Heaven's sake, for her _own_
sake, let the girl keep away!

But the days slipped past, and Teresa did not appear, and a new terror
dawned in Cassandra's heart. Suppose instead of coming to herself, the
girl went to Bernard and warned him of the threatened danger to his
house! Every time that her husband entered the room afresh, Cassandra
glanced at his face with an eager scrutiny, and every time Bernard
smiled with unruffled cheerfulness and said, "Feeling better, old girl?
Had your tonic?"

Grizel had laid down strict injunctions as to the treatment of her
patient on her return to the Court, and had perjured herself by giving
the Squire a highly pessimistic opinion of his wife's health, the result
of which had been a certain amount of bluff kindliness and unfailing
enquiries as to the consumption of tonics. Cassandra detested the idea
of Bernard's hearing the