thing at all, not
even the hundred pounds; but a wife can't run away for reasons of that
kind--can she, Letty?'

Letty gazed with her eyes of loving pity, and sighed, 'I suppose not,
dear.'

Adela sat with them for only a few minutes more. She did not feel able
to chat at length on a crisis such as this, and the tone of her mother's
sympathy was not soothing to her. Mrs. Waltham had begun to put a
handkerchief to her eyes.

'You mustn't take it to heart,' Adela said as she bent and kissed her
cheek. 'You can't think how little it troubles me--on my own account.
Letty, I look to you to keep mother cheerful. Only think what numbers
of poor creatures would dance for joy if they had a hundred a year left
them! We must be philosophers, you see. I couldn't shed a tear if I
tried ever so hard. Good-bye, dear mother!'

Mrs. Waltham did not rise, but Letty followed her friend into the hall.
She had been very silent and undemonstrative; now she embraced Adela
tenderly. There was still something of the old diffidence in her
manner, but the effect of her motherhood was discernible. Adela was
childless--a circumstance in itself provocative of a gentle sense of
protection in Letty's heart.

'You'll let us see you every day, darling?'

'As often as I can, Letty. Don't let mother get low-spirited. There's
nothing to grieve about.'

Letty returned to the sitting-room; Mrs. Waltham was still pressing the
handkerchief on this cheek and that alternately.

'How wonderful she is!' Letty exclaimed. 'I feel as if I could never
again fret over little troubles.'

'Adela has a strong character,' assented the mother with mournful pride.

Letty, unable to sit long without her baby, fetched it from the nurse's
arms. The infant's luncheon-hour had arrived, and the nourishment was
still of Letty's own providing. It was strange to see on her face the
slow triumph of this ineffable bliss over the grief occasioned by the
recent conversation. Mrs. Waltham had floated into a stream of talk.

'Now, what a strange thing it is!' she observed, after many other
reflections, and when the sound of her own voice had had time to soothe.
'On the very morning of the wedding I had the most singular misgiving,
a feeling I couldn't explain. One would almost think I had foreseen this
very thing. And you know very well, my dear, that the marriage troubled
me in many ways. It was not _the_ match for Adela, but then--. Adela, as
you say, has a strong character