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Helena back just yet. I shall run up next week to see her, I think, Cynthia, if you will let me. I really will take Arthur to Beechmark this week. Mrs. Mawson has arranged everything. His rooms are all ready for him. Will you come and look at them to-morrow?" Cynthia did not reply at once, and he watched her a little anxiously. He was well aware what giving up the boy would mean to her. Her devotion had been amazing. But the wrench must come some time. "Yes, of course--you must take him," said Cynthia, at last. "If only--I hadn't come to love him so!" She didn't cry. She was perfectly self-possessed. But there was something in her pensive, sorrowful look that affected Philip more than any vehement emotion could have done. The thought of all her devotion--their long friendship--her womanly ways--came upon him overwhelmingly. But another thought checked it--Helena!--and his promise to her dead mother. If he now made Cynthia the mistress of Beechmark, Helena would never return to it. For they were incompatible. He saw it plainly. And to Helena he was bound; while she needed the shelter of his roof. So that the words that were actually on Philip's lips remained unspoken. They walked back rather silently to the cottage. At supper Cynthia told her sister that the boy, with Zelie and his teacher, would soon trouble her no more. Georgina expressed an ungracious satisfaction, adding abruptly--"You'll be able to see him there, Cynthy, just as well as here." Cynthia made no reply. CHAPTER XVI Mrs. Friend was sitting in the bow-window of the "Fisherman's Rest," a small Welsh inn in the heart of Snowdonia. The window was open, and a smell of damp earth and grass beat upon Lucy in gusts from outside, carried by a rainy west wind. Beyond the road, a full stream, white and foaming after rain, was dashing over a rocky bed towards some rapids which closed the view. The stream was crossed by a little bridge, and beyond it rose a hill covered with oak-wood. Above the oak-wood and along the road to the right--mountain forms, deep blue and purple, were emerging from the mists which had shrouded them all day. The sun was breaking through. A fierce northwest wind which had been tearing the young leaf of the oak-woods all day, and strewing it abroad, had just died away. Peace was returning, and light. The figure of Helena had just disappeared through the oak-wood; Lucy would follow her later. Behind Mrs. Friend, th
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