arm round
Ermyntrude, the younger, and Durant saw her winding her long fingers
in and out of the golden hair, and looking down into the child's
face, Madonna-like, with humid, tender, maternal eyes.

He thought of her as the mother of Manby's children, and he hated
the little girls.

There was a voice at his elbow. "Isn't she splendid?" Miss
Chatterton had seated herself in Frida's chair.

Her presence brought him instantaneous relief. He had been glad to
meet Miss Chatterton again. Not that he would have known her, for
time had not dealt very kindly with the young girl. Her face, from
overmuch play of expression, showed a few little wrinkles already,
her complexion had suffered the fate of sanguine complexions, it had
not gone altogether, but it was going--fast, the color was beginning
to run. But time had not subdued her extravagant spirits or touched
her imperishable mirth. In spite of a lapse of five years she gave
him a pleasant sense of continuity; she took him up exactly where
she had put him down, on the platform of the little wayside station
of Whithorn-in-Arden. Unlike Frida, Miss Chatterton had not
developed. When she began to talk she had the air of merely
continuing their last important conversation.

"Didn't I tell you how she'd come out if she got her chance?"

"You did."

"And wasn't I right?"

"You were."

"But you oughtn't to have needed telling, you ought to have seen it
for yourself."

"Right again. I ought to have seen it for myself."

"He who will not when he may will live to fight another day; isn't
that how it goes on?"

"Yes; I congratulate you on your work."

"It isn't my work, lord bless you! nor yours, either--_there_ I was
wrong."

"What is it, then?"

Miss Chatterton stared out over the sea and into the universal air.
"Why, it's--it's everything! Of course you did something, so did I.
But if it comes to that, the present Mrs. Tancred did more than
either of us. We couldn't have married the Colonel."

"Then you think that was the reason why she----"

"I do, indeed. She could have had no other. You see she was awfully
fond of Frida. And, what's more, she was fond of you."

It was his turn to look out over the sea.

"What do you think? He has never forgiven her for going away, though
it happened to be the very thing he wanted. How's that for
inconsistency?"

"Has she seen the--the Colonel since?"

"She has. A strange, unaccountable longing to see the Colonel comes