subjects that relieve tension; the weather--the possibility of
a rush of Easter tourists to the Lakes--the daffodils that were
beginning to make beauty in some sheltered places. Marsworth assisted
her; while Cicely took a chair beside Nelly, and talked exclusively to
her, in a low voice. Presently Hester saw their hands slip
together--Cicely's long and vigorous fingers enfolding Nelly's thin
ones. How had two such opposites ever come to make friends? The kindly
old maid was very conscious of cross currents in the spiritual air, as
she chatted to Marsworth. She was keenly aware of Farrell, and could not
keep the remembrance of what he had said to her out of her mind. Nelly's
face and form, also, as the twilight veiled them, were charged for
Hester with pitiful meaning. While at the back of her thoughts there was
an expectation, a constant and agitating expectation, of another
arrival. Bridget Cookson might be upon them at any moment. To Hester
Martin she was rapidly becoming a disquieting and sinister element in
this group of people. Yet why, Hester could not really have explained.

The afternoon was rapidly drawing in, and Farrell was just beginning to
take out his watch, and talk of starting home, when the usual clatter of
wheels and hoofs announced the arrival of the evening coach. Nelly sat
up, looking very white and weary.

'I am expecting my sister,' she said to Farrell. 'She has no doubt come
by this coach.'

And in a few more minutes, Bridget was in the room, distributing to
everybody there the careless staccato greetings which were her way of
protecting herself against the world. Her entrance and her manner had
always a disintegrating effect upon other human beings; and Bridget had
no sooner shaken hands with the Farrells than everybody--save Nelly--was
upon their feet and ready to move. One of Bridget's most curious and
marked characteristics was an unerring instinct for whatever news might
be disagreeable to the company in which she found herself; and on this
occasion she brought some bad war news--a German advance at Verdun, with
corresponding French losses--and delivered it with the emphasis of one
to whom it was not really unwelcome. Cicely, to whom, flourishing her
evening paper, she had mainly addressed herself, listened with the
haughty and casual air she generally put on for Bridget Cookson. She had
succumbed for her own reasons to the charm of Nelly. She was only the
more inclined to be rude to Brid