his
stick. "Upon my soul, I sometimes think you're on her side!" he
ejaculated.

"No--but I like fair play," she returned, measuring his tea carefully
into his favourite little porcelain tea-pot.

"Fair play?"

"She's offering to do her part. It's for you to do yours now--to take
Cicely to Hanaford."

"If I find her there, I never cross Amherst's threshold again!"

Mrs. Ansell, without answering, rose and put his tea-cup on the
slender-legged table at his elbow; then, before returning to her seat,
she found the enamelled match-box and laid it by the cup. It was
becoming difficult for Mr. Langhope to guide his movements about her
small encumbered room; and he had always liked being waited on.

* * * * *

Mrs. Ansell's prognostication proved correct. When Mr. Langhope and
Cicely arrived at Hanaford they found Amherst alone to receive them. He
explained briefly that his wife had been unwell, and had gone to seek
rest and change at the house of an old friend in the west. Mr. Langhope
expressed a decent amount of regret, and the subject was dropped as if
by common consent. Cicely, however, was not so easily silenced. Poor
Bessy's uncertain fits of tenderness had produced more bewilderment than
pleasure in her sober-minded child; but the little girl's feelings and
perceptions had developed rapidly in the equable atmosphere of her
step-mother's affection. Cicely had reached the age when children put
their questions with as much ingenuity as persistence, and both Mr.
Langhope and Amherst longed for Mrs. Ansell's aid in parrying her
incessant interrogations as to the cause and length of Justine's
absence, what she had said before going, and what promise she had made
about coming back. But Mrs. Ansell had not come to Hanaford. Though it
had become a matter of habit to include her in the family pilgrimages to
the mills she had firmly maintained the plea of more urgent engagements;
and the two men, with only Cicely between them, had spent the long days
and longer evenings in unaccustomed and unmitigated propinquity.

Mr. Langhope, before leaving, thought it proper to touch tentatively on
his promise of giving Cicely to Amherst for the summer; but to his
surprise the latter, after a moment of hesitation, replied that he
should probably go to Europe for two or three months.

"To Europe? Alone?" escaped from Mr. Langhope before he had time to
weigh his words.

Amherst frowned slightly. "I h