r! It will be all right. They say so. Take me to
the window that I may look out!" They stand together at the open
casement, listening to the voices of the birds. The shrewdest observer
might fail to detect the flaw in those two full clear eyes that seem to
look out at the leagues of park-land, the spotted deer in the distance,
the long avenue-road soon indistinguishable in the trees. The sister
sees those eyes, no other than she has always known them, but knows that
they see nothing.

"When I was here first," says the brother, "the thrushes were still
singing. They are off duty by now, the very last of them." He stops
listening. "That's a yellow-hammer. And that's a linnet. _You_ can't
tell one from the other."

"I know. I'm shockingly ignorant.... What, dear? What is it you want?"
Her brother has been exploring the window-frame with a restless hand,
as though in search of some latch or blind-cord. He cannot find what he
wants.

"I want to come to a clearness about the position of this blessed
window," he says. "Which direction is the bed in now? Well--describe it
this way, suppose! Say I'm looking north now, with my shoulder against
the window. Where's the bed? South-west--south-east--due south?"

"South-west by south. Perhaps that's not nautical, but you know what I
mean."

"All right! Now, look here! As I stand here--looking out
slantwise--where's the sunset? I mean, where would it be?--where does it
mean to be?"

"You would be looking straight at it. Of course, you are not really
looking north.... There--now you are!" She had taken her hands from the
shoulder they were folded on and turned his head to the right. "But, I
say, Adrian dear!..." She hesitates.

"What, for instance?"

"Don't try to humbug too much. Don't try to do it, darling boy. You'll
only make a hash of it."

"All right, goosey-woosey! I'll fry my own fish. Don't you be uneasy!"
And then they talk of other things: the journey home to-morrow, and how
it shall be as good as lying in bed to Adrian, in the big carriage with
an infinity of cushions; the new friends they have made here at the
Towers, with something of wonderment that this chance has been so long
postponed; the kindness they have had from them, and the ill-requital
Adrian made for it yesterday by breaking that beautiful blue china
tea-cup--any trifle that comes foremost--anything but the great grief
that underlies the whole.

For Irene would have her brother at his best, that