d, while
she was to all appearance indifferently busied with her supper.

But the conversation ran, as it is wont to run at such times, when
hearts long absent have found each other again, and fling trifles
about, knowing that their stores of treasure must wait for a quieter
time to be unpacked. They talked of weather and crops and Pitt's
voyage, and the neighbours, and the changes in the village, and the
improvements about the place; not as if any of these things were much
cared for; they were bubbles floating on their cups of joy. Questions
asked and questions answered, as if in the pleasure of speaking to one
another again the subject of their words did not matter; or as if the
supreme content of the moment could spare a little benevolence even for
these outside things. At last a question was asked which made Betty
prick up her ears; this must have been due to something indefinable in
the tone of the speakers, for the words were nothing.

'Have you heard anything of the Gainsboroughs?'

'No.'

It was the elder Dallas who answered.

'What has become of them?'

'I am not in condition to tell.'

'Have you written to them?'

'No, not since the last time; and that was a good while ago.'

'Then you do not know how things are with them, of course. I do not see
how you have let them drop out of knowledge so. They were not exactly
people to lose sight of.'

'Why not, when they went out of sight?'

'You do not even know, sir, whether Colonel Gainsborough is still
living?'

'How should I? But he was as likely to live as any other man.'

'He did not think so.'

'For which very reason he would probably live longer than many other
men. There is nothing like a hypochondriack for tough holding out.'

'Well, I must search New York for them this time, until I find them.'

'What possible occasion, Pitt?' said his mother, with a tone of
uneasiness which Betty noted.

'Duty, mamma, and also pleasure. But duty is imperative.'

'I do not see the duty. You tried to look them up the last time you
were here, and failed.'

'I shall not fail this time.'

'If it depended on your will,' remarked his father coolly. 'But I think
the probability is that they have gone back to England, and are
consequently no longer in New York.'

'What are the grounds of that probability?'

'When last I heard from the colonel, he was proposing the question of
reconciliation with his family. And as I have heard no more from him
since the