she was, sobbing; actually sobbing like a schoolgirl,
her beautiful shoulders rising and falling with her grief; crying
unmistakably through her long white fingers, through a lace
pocket-handkerchief which she had hurriedly produced and shaken from
behind her like a conjurer's trick; her beautiful eyes a thousand times
more lustrous for the sparkling beads that brimmed her lashes and welled
over like the pool before her.

"Don't mind me," she murmured behind her handkerchief. "It's very
foolish, I know. I was nervous--worried, I suppose; I'll be better in a
moment. Don't notice me, please."

But Barker had drawn beside her and was trying, after the fashion of his
sex, to take her handkerchief away in apparently the firm belief that
this action would stop her tears. "But tell me what it is. Do Mrs.
Horncastle, please," he pleaded in his boyish fashion. "Is it anything I
can do? Only say the word; only tell me SOMETHING!"

But he had succeeded in partially removing the handkerchief, and so
caught a glimpse of her wet eyes, in which a faint smile struggled out
like sunshine through rain. But they clouded again, although she didn't
cry, and her breath came and went with the action of a sob, and her
hands still remained against her flushed face.

"I was only going to talk to you of Kitty" (sob)--"but I suppose I'm
weak" (sob)--"and such a fool" (sob) "and I got to thinking of myself
and my own sorrows when I ought to be thinking only of you and Kitty."

"Never mind Kitty," said Barker impulsively. "Tell me about
yourself--your own sorrows. I am a brute to have bothered you about her
at such a moment; and now until you have told me what is paining you so
I shall not let you speak of her." He was perfectly sincere. What
were Kitty's possible and easy tears over the loss of her money to the
unknown agony that could wrench a sob from a woman like this? "Dear Mrs.
Horncastle," he went on as breathlessly, "think of me now not as Kitty's
husband, but as your true friend. Yes, as your BEST and TRUEST friend,
and speak to me as you would speak to him."

"You will be my friend?" she said suddenly and passionately,
grasping his hand, "my best and truest friend? and if I tell you
all,--everything, you will not cast me from you and hate me?"

Barker felt the same thrill from her warm hand slowly possess his whole
being as it had the evening before, but this time he was prepared and
answered the grasp and her eyes together as he sa