a charming elder-sisterliness on hers. Then he had declared himself,
and she had refused him in order to marry Henry Marsham and Henry
Marsham's fortune. It seemed to him then that he would soon forget
her--soon find a warmer and more generous heart. But that was mere
ignorance of himself. After awhile he became the intimate friend of her
husband, herself, and her child. Something, indeed, had happened to his
affection for her. He felt himself in no danger beside her, so far as
passion was concerned; and he knew very well that she would have
banished him forever at a moment's notice rather than give her husband
an hour's uneasiness. But to be near her, to be in her world, consulted,
trusted, and flattered by her, to slip daily into his accustomed chair,
to feel year by year the strands of friendship and of intimacy woven
more closely between him and her--between him and hers--these things
gradually filled all the space in his life left by politics or by
thought. They deprived him of any other home, and this home became a
necessity.

Then Henry Marsham died. Once more Ferrier asked Lady Lucy to marry him,
and again she refused. He acquiesced; their old friendship was resumed;
but, once more, with a difference. In a sense he had no longer any
illusions about her. He saw that while she believed herself to be acting
under the influence of religion and other high matters, she was, in
truth, a narrow and rather cold-hearted woman, with a strong element of
worldliness, disguised in much placid moralizing. At the bottom of his
soul he resented her treatment of him, and despised himself for
submitting to it. But the old habit had become a tyranny not to be
broken. Where else could he go for talk, for intimacy, for rest? And for
all his disillusion there were still at her command occasional
felicities of manner and strains of feeling--ethereally delicate and
spiritual, like a stanza from the _Christian Year_--that moved him and
pleased his taste as nothing else had power to move and please; steeped,
as they were, in a far-off magic of youth and memory.

So he stayed by her, and she knew very well that he would stay by her to
the end.

He sat down beside her and took her hand.

"You are tired."

"It has been a miserable day."

"Shall I read to you? It would be wise, I think, to put it out of your
mind for a while, and come back to it fresh."

"It will be difficult to attend." Her smile was faint and sad. "But I
will do my