apid rotation
himself before proceeding to the matter in hand.

"Having noticed that a mother--I mean a young mother--is never really
happy in the absence of her children, and that their affection makes up
for the carelessness of their father, may I ask, Violet, what day you
wish to return to Westhope?" he said one morning at breakfast.

"Any day," she replied. "I am as miserable in one place as in another."

"We will say Friday week, then," returned Lord Newhaven, ignoring, as he
invariably did, any allusions to their relative position, and because he
ignored them she made many. "The country," he added, hurriedly, "will be
very refreshing after the glare and dust and empty worldly society of
London."

She looked at him in anger. She did not understand the reason, but she
had long vaguely felt that all conversation seemed to dry up in his
presence. He mopped it all into his own sponge, so to speak, and left
every subject exhausted.

She rose in silent dignity, and went to her boudoir and lay down there.
The heat was very great, and another fire was burning within her,
withering her round cheek, and making her small, plump hand look shrunk
and thin. A fortnight had passed, and she had not heard from Hugh. She
had written to him many times, at first only imploring him to meet her,
but afterwards telling him she knew what had happened, and entreating
him to put her out of suspense, to send her one line that his life was
not endangered. She had received no answer to any of her letters. She
came to the conclusion that they had been intercepted by Lord Newhaven,
and that no doubt the same fate had befallen Hugh's letters to herself.
For some time past, before the drawing of lots, she had noticed that
Hugh's letters had become less frequent and shorter in length. She
understood the reason now. Half of them had been intercepted. How that
fact could account for the shortness of the remainder may not be
immediately apparent to the prosaic mind, but it was obvious to Lady
Newhaven. That Hugh had begun to weary of her could not force the narrow
entrance to her mind. Such a possibility had never been even considered
in the pictures of the future with which her imagination busied itself.
But what would the future be? The road along which she was walking
forked before her eyes, and her usual perspicacity was at fault. She
knew not in which of those two diverging paths the future would lie.

Would she in eighteen months' time--sh