he
straightened himself up with a pale flash of indignation. "You've had
moments lately----!"

"I've had moments, yes; and so have you--when the child came back to us,
and we stood there and wondered how we could keep her, tie her
fast...and in those moments I saw...saw what she wanted...and so did
you!"

Mr. Langhope turned away his head. "You're a sentimentalist!" he flung
scornfully back.

"Oh, call me any bad names you please!"

"I won't send for that woman!"

"No." She fastened her furs slowly, with the gentle deliberate movements
that no emotion ever hastened or disturbed.

"Why do you say no?" he challenged her.

"To make you contradict me, perhaps," she ventured, after looking at him
again.

"Ah----" He shifted his position, one elbow supporting his bowed head,
his eyes fixed on the ground. Presently he brought out: "Could one ask
her to come--and see the child--and go away again--for good?"

"To break the compact at your pleasure, and enter into it again for the
same reason?"

"No--no--I see." He paused, and then looked up at her suddenly. "But
what if Amherst won't have her back himself?"

"Shall I ask him?"

"I tell you he can't bear to hear her name!"

"But he doesn't know why she has left him."

Mr. Langhope gathered his brows in a frown. "Why--what on earth--what
possible difference would that make?"

Mrs. Ansell, from the doorway, shed a pitying glance on him. "Ah--if you
don't see!" she murmured.

He sank back into his seat with a groan. "Good heavens, Maria, how you
torture me! I see enough as it is--I see too much of the cursed
business!"

She paused again, and then slowly moved a step or two nearer, laying her
hand on his shoulder.

"There's one thing you've never seen yet, Henry: what Bessy herself
would do now--for the child--if she could."

He sat motionless under her light touch, his eyes on hers, till their
inmost thoughts felt for and found each other, as they still sometimes
could, through the fog of years and selfishness and worldly habit; then
he dropped his face into his hands, hiding it from her with the
instinctive shrinking of an aged grief.

XLI

AMHERST, Cicely's convalescence once assured, had been obliged to go
back to Hanaford; but some ten days later, on hearing from Mrs. Ansell
that the little girl's progress was less rapid than had been hoped, he
returned to his father-in-law's for a Sunday.

He came two days after the talk recorded in the l