ir difficulties
insuperable; but why this should be so, seemed to her one of the dark
and mournful enigmas of life. It implied such a lack not only of good
sense, but of right feeling. In her own experience she had met with no
doubt, no worry, which did not yield to tact, or generous endeavour,
or, at worst, to the creed by which she lived. One solicitude, and one
only, continued to affect her as wife and mother; that it could not
overcome her happy temper was due to the hope perpetually inspired by
her husband's love--a hope inseparable from her profoundest
convictions. She and Morton differed in religious views, and there had
come a grave moment when she asked whether it would be possible to
educate her children in her own belief without putting a distance
between them and their father. The doubt had disappeared, thanks to
Morton's breadth of view, or facility of conscience; there remained the
trouble in which it had originated, but she solaced herself with the
fond assurance that this also would vanish as time went on. In the same
mood of kindly serenity she regarded the lives of her friends, always
hoping for the best, and finding it hard to understand that anyone
could deliberately act with unkindness, unreasonableness, or any other
quality opposed to the common good.

Rolfe had no desire of talking further about his private affairs. He
had made up his mind on the points at issue, and needed no counsel, but
the spirit of Mrs. Morton's conversation helped him to think
tranquilly. The great danger was that he might make things worse by his
way of regarding them. Most unluckily, Alma's illness had become
connected in his imagination with the tragedy of the Carnabys; he could
not keep the things apart. Hugh Carnaby's miserable doom, and the dark
surmises attaching to his wife, doubtless had their part in bringing
about a nervous crisis; why could he not recognise this as perfectly
natural, and dismiss the matter? In spite of all reasoning, Alma's
image ever and again appeared to him shadowed by the gloom which
involved her friend--or the woman who _was_ her friend. He knew it (or
believed it) to be the merest illusion of his perturbed mind; for no
fact, how trivial soever, had suggested to him that Alma knew more of
the circumstances of Redgrave's death than she seemed to know. On the
one hand, he was glad that Alma and Sibyl no longer cared to meet; on
the other, he could not understand what had caused this cessation