d by Tony as "sad," set in with severity.

His depression was positively overwhelming, and he seemed to think that
its public manifestation should arouse in all beholders the most
poignant and respectful sympathy.

Poor Jan found it very difficult to behave in a manner at all calculated
to satisfy her brother-in-law. She had not, so far, uttered one word of
reproach to him, but she _would_ shrink visibly when he tried to discuss
his wife, and she could not even pretend to believe in the deep
sincerity of a grief that seemed to find such facile solace in
expression. The mode of expression, too, in hackneyed, commonplace
phrases, set her teeth on edge.

She knew that poor Hugo--she called him "poor Hugo" just then--thought
her cold and unsympathetic because she rather discouraged his
outpourings; but Fay's death was too lately-lived a tragedy to make it
possible for her to talk of it--above all, with him; and after several
abortive attempts Hugo gave up all direct endeavour to make her.

"You are terribly Scotch, Jan," he said one day. "I sometimes wonder
whether anything could make you _really_ feel."

Jan looked at him with a sort of contemptuous wonder that caused him to
redden angrily, but she made no reply.

He was her guest, he was a broken man, and she knew well that they had
not yet even approached their real difference.

Two people, however, took Hugo's attitude of profound dejection in the
way he expected and liked it to be taken. These were Mr. Withells and
Hannah.

Mr. Withells did not bear Jan a grudge because of her momentary lapse
from good manners. In less than a week from the unfortunate interview in
the nut-walk he had decided that she could not properly have understood
him; and that he had, perhaps, sprung upon her too suddenly the high
honour he held in store for her.

So back he came in his neat little two-seater car to call at Wren's End
as if nothing had happened, and Jan, guiltily conscious that she _had_
been very rude, was only too thankful to accept the olive-branch in the
spirit in which it was offered.

He took to coming almost as often as before, and was thoroughly
interested and commiserating when he heard that poor Mrs. Tancred's
husband had come home from India and been taken ill almost immediately
on arrival. He sent some early strawberries grown in barrels in the
houses, and with them a note conjuring Jan "on no account to leave them
in the sickroom overnight, as the smell of