escended; but the eighty-year-old legs of Miss Crewys still
climbed the nursery staircase, and she revenged herself for her
inferior status by insisting, in defiance of old associations, that
her maid should occupy the room next to her own, which her sister had
abandoned.

"For my part, I can sleep in one room as well as another, provided it
be comfortable and _appropriate_," said Lady Belstone, with dignity.
"There are very pleasant rooms in the Dower House, and our great-aunts
managed to live there in comfort, and yet keep an eye on their nephew
here, as I have always been told. I don't know why we should object to
doing the same. You have never tried being mistress of your own house,
Georgina, but I can assure you it has its advantages; and I found them
out as a married woman."

"A married woman has her husband to look after her," said Miss Crewys.
"It is very different for a widow."

"You are for ever throwing my widowhood in my teeth, Georgina," said
Lady Belstone, plaintively. "It is not my fault that I am a widow. I
did not murder the admiral."

"I don't say you did, Isabella," said Georgina, grimly; "but he only
survived his marriage six months."

"It is nice to be silent sometimes," said Lady Mary.

"Does that mean that I am to go away?" said John, "or merely that I am
not to speak to you?"

She laughed a little. "Neither. It means that I am tired of being
scolded."

"I have wondered now and then," said John, deliberately, "why you put
up with it?"

"I suppose--because I can't help it," she said, startled.

"You are a free agent."

"You mean that I could go away?" she said, in a low voice. "But there
is only one place I should care to go to now."

"To South Africa?"

"You always understand," she said gratefully.

"Supposing this--this ghastly war should not be over as soon as we all
hope," he said, rather huskily, "I could escort you myself, in a few
weeks' time, to the Cape. Or--or arrange for your going earlier if
you desired, and if I could not get away. Probably you would get
no further than Cape Town; but it might be easier for you waiting
there--than here."

"I shall thank you, and bless you always, for thinking of it," she
interrupted, softly; "but there is something--that I never told
anybody."

He waited.

"After Peter had the news of his father's death," said Lady Mary, with
a sob in her throat, "you did not know that he--he telegraphed to me,
from Madeira. He foresaw immediat