ther hand too over Margaret's.

"My dear; I do not know. I cannot speak of that."

"But you said--"

"Margaret, my pet; you would not hurt me, would you? I do not think I
can bear to speak of that."

The nun gripped the other's two hands passionately, and laid her cheek
against them.

"Beatrice, I did not know--I forgot."

Beatrice stooped and kissed her gently.

* * * * *

The nun loved her tenfold more after that. It had been before a kind of
passionate admiration, such as a subject might feel for a splendid
queen; but the queen had taken this timid soul in through the
palace-gates now, into a little inner chamber intimate and apart, and
had sat with her there and shown her everything, her broken toys, her
failures; and more than all her own broken heart. And as, after that
evening, Margaret watched Beatrice again in public, heard her retorts
and marked her bearing, she knew that she knew something that the others
did not; she had the joy of sharing a secret of pain. But there was one
wound that Beatrice did not show her; that secret was reserved for one
who had more claim to it, and could understand. The nun could not have
interpreted it rightly.

* * * * *

Mary and Nicholas went back to Great Keynes at the end of January; and
Beatrice was out on the terrace with the others to see them go. Jim, the
little seven-year-old boy, had fallen in love with her, ever since he
had found that she treated him like a man, with deference and courtesy,
and did not talk about him in his presence and over his head. He was
walking with her now, a little apart, as the horses came round, and
explaining to her how it was that he only rode a pony at present, and
not a horse.

"My legs would not reach, Mistress Atherton," he said, protruding a
small leather boot. "It is not because I am afraid, or father either. I
rode Jess, the other day, but not astride."

"I quite understand," said Beatrice respectfully, without the shadow of
laughter in her face.

"You see--" began the boy.

Then his mother came up.

"Run, Jim, and hold my horse. Mistress Beatrice, may I have a word with
you?"

The two turned and walked down to the end of the terrace again.

"It is this," said Mary, looking at the other from under her plumed hat,
with her skirt gathered up with her whip in her gloved hand. "I wished
to tell you about my mother. I have not dared till now. I have never