That's in the picture, isn't it?"

Honoria paused. She leaned forward, her chin in her hands, her elbows
on her knees. She looked up at John Knott, and there was a singular
expression in her clear and serious eyes.

"I used to pity Cousin Katherine," she said. "I used to break my heart
over her. And now--now, upon my word, I believe I envy her.--And see
here, Dr. Knott, she has asked me to go on to Brockhurst from here. It
seems that though Richard refuses to see any one, except you of course,
and Julius March, he fusses at his mother being so much alone. What
ought I to do? I feel rather uncertain. I have fought him, I own I
have. We have never been friends, he and I. He doesn't like me. He's no
reason to like me--anything but! What do you say? Shall I refuse or
shall I go?"

And the doctor reflected a little, drawing his great, square hand down
over his mouth and heavy, bristly chin.

"Yes, go," he answered. "Go and chance it. Your being at Brockhurst may
work out in more of good than we now know."

CHAPTER V

TELLING HOW DICKIE CAME TO UNTIE A CERTAIN TAG OF RUSTY, BLACK RIBBON

Yet, as those gray, midwinter weeks went on to Christmas, and the
coming of the New Year, it became undeniable there was that in the
aspect of affairs at Brockhurst which might very well provoke curious
comment. For the rigour of Richard Calmady's self-imposed seclusion, to
which Miss St. Quentin had made allusion in her conversation with Dr.
Knott, was not relaxed. Rather, indeed, did it threaten to pass from
the accident of a first return, after long absence and illness, into a
matter of fixed and accepted habit. For those years of lonely wandering
and spasmodic rage of living, finding their climax in deepening
disappointment, disillusion, and the shock of rudely inflicted insult
and disgrace, had produced in Richard a profound sense of alienation
from society and from the amenities of ordinary intercourse. Since he
was apparently doomed to survive, he would go home--but go home very
much as some trapped or wounded beast crawls back to hide in its lair.
He was master in his own house, at least, and safe from intrusion
there. The place offered the silent sympathy of things familiar, and
therefore, in a sense, uncritical. It is restful to look on that upon
which one has already looked a thousand times. And so, after his
reconciliation with his mother, followed, in natural sequence, his
reconciliation with Brockhurst. Here he