!'

'Yes, I know,' Annabel answered, rather absently, letting her eyes
stray. 'Never mind. You had something particular to say to me, Mrs.
Ormonde.'

'Yes, I have a good-bye for you from an old acquaintance.'

Annabel's complexion had not borne the season as well as those of women
whose whole and sole preoccupation it is to combat Nature in the matter
of their personal appearance. Her tint was, as they say, a little
fatigued. Fatigued, too, were her eyes, which seemed ever looking for
something lost; that gaze she had in sitting by Ullswater with 'Sesame
and Lilies' on her lap would not be easily recovered. Her beauty was of
rarer quality and infinitely more suggestive than on that day something
more than a year ago; to the modern mind nothing is complete that has
not an element of morbidity. At Mrs. Ormonde's words she turned with
grave interest.

'Where, then, is he going?' she asked, just smiling.

'To a small manufacturing town in Pennsylvania. His firm has just
opened works there, and he has it in view to prepare himself for
superintending them.'

'You are serious?'

'Quite. I think it was chiefly my persuasion that decided him. I have
no doubt that in a year or two he will thank me, though he is not very
ardent about it at present.'

'But surely he--No, I think you are right.'

'I have not advised him to become an American,' Mrs. Ormonde continued,
smiling, when Annabel abandoned an apparent intention of saying more.
'No doubt he will come to England now and then, and probably, with his
disposition, he will some day make his home here again. I hardly expect
to see him for some two years.'

'I hope it is right. I think it is.'

Annabel paused a little, then made an unforced transition to other
matters. She rose to leave before long. Whilst her hand was in Mrs.
Ormonde's, she asked:

'May I know anything more than father told me?'

She had said it with a little difficulty, but without confusion of face.

'What did your father tell you?'

'Only that she is in your care, and that you think her voice can be
cultivated, so as to serve her.'

'Yes, I will tell you more than that, dear. He is absolutely without
bond as regards her. They have never met since her flight from home,
and, more, she has no suspicion that he ever took an interest in her
save as Mr. Grail's future wife.'

'She does not know that?'

'She has no idea of it. They have never exchanged a more than friendly
word. He believed, w