ere of the mills; and to ears trained like his own he could make
his voice heard without difficulty. But his attempts at speech were
unintelligible to Mrs. Westmore and her companions, and after vainly
trying to communicate with him by signs they hurried on as if to escape
as quickly as possible from the pursuing whirlwind.

Amherst could not allow for the depressing effect of this enforced
silence. He did not see that if Bessy could have questioned him the
currents of sympathy might have remained open between them, whereas,
compelled to walk in silence through interminable ranks of meaningless
machines, to which the human workers seemed mere automatic appendages,
she lost all perception of what the scene meant. He had forgotten, too,
that the swift apprehension of suffering in others is as much the result
of training as the immediate perception of beauty. Both perceptions may
be inborn, but if they are not they can be developed only through the
discipline of experience.

"That girl in the hospital would have seen it all," he reflected, as the
vision of Miss Brent's small incisive profile rose before him; but the
next moment he caught the light on Mrs. Westmore's hair, as she bent
above a card, and the paler image faded like a late moon in the sunrise.

Meanwhile Mrs. Ansell, seeing that the detailed inspection of the
buildings was as trying to Mr. Langhope's lameness as to his daughter's
nerves, had proposed to turn back with him and drive to Mrs. Amherst's,
where he might leave her to call while the others were completing their
rounds. It was one of Mrs. Ansell's gifts to detect the first symptoms
of _ennui_ in her companions, and produce a remedy as patly as old
ladies whisk out a scent-bottle or a cough-lozenge; and Mr. Langhope's
look of relief showed the timeliness of her suggestion.

Amherst was too preoccupied to wonder how his mother would take this
visit; but he welcomed Mr. Langhope's departure, hoping that the
withdrawal of his ironic smile would leave his daughter open to gentler
influences. Mr. Tredegar, meanwhile, was projecting his dry glance over
the scene, trying to converse by signs with the overseers of the
different rooms, and pausing now and then to contemplate, not so much
the workers themselves as the special tasks which engaged them.

How these spectators of the party's progress were affected by Mrs.
Westmore's appearance, even Amherst, for all his sympathy with their
views, could not detect