d known seemed to be imprisoned within the wall the
years of her separated life had built about her. At each breath she drew
Bettina saw how long the years had been to her, and how far her home had
seemed to lie away, so far that it could not touch her, and was only
a sort of dream, the recalling of which made her suddenly begin to cry
again every few minutes. To Bettina's sensitively alert mind it was
plain that it would not do in the least to drag her suddenly out of her
prison, or cloister, whichsoever it might be. To do so would be like
forcing a creature accustomed only to darkness, to stare at the blazing
sun. To have burst upon her with the old impetuous, candid fondness
would have been to frighten and shock her as if with something bordering
on indecency. She could not have stood it; perhaps such fondness was
so remote from her in these days that she had even ceased to be able to
understand it.

"Where are your little girls?" Bettina asked, remembering that there had
been notice given of the advent of two girl babies.

"They died," Lady Anstruthers answered unemotionally. "They both died
before they were a year old. There is only Ughtred."

Betty glanced at the boy and saw a small flame of red creep up on his
cheek. Instinctively she knew what it meant, and she put out her hand
and lightly touched his shoulder.

"I hope you'll like me, Ughtred," she said.

He almost started at the sound of her voice, but when he turned his face
towards her he only grew redder, and looked awkward without answering.
His manner was that of a boy who was unused to the amenities of polite
society, and who was only made shy by them.

Without warning, a moment or so later, Bettina stopped in the middle
of the avenue, and looked up at the arching giant branches of the trees
which had reached out from one side to the other, as if to clasp hands
or encompass an interlacing embrace. As far as the eye reached, they did
this, and the beholder stood as in a high stately pergola, with breaks
of deep azure sky between. Several mellow, cawing rooks were floating
solemnly beneath or above the branches, now wand then settling in some
highest one or disappearing in the thick greenness.

Lady Anstruthers stopped when her sister did so, and glanced at her in
vague inquiry. It was plain that she had outlived even her sense of the
beauty surrounding her.

"What are you looking at, Betty?" she asked.

"At all of it," Betty answered. "It is so