ring the long motor ride home; and on their
arrival at Carton she jumped out of the car, and with barely a nod to
Marsworth, vanished into the house.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Nelly had let Hester install her on the Carton couch, and lay
there well shawled, beside the window, her delicate face turned to the
lake and the mountains. Bridget was unpacking, and Hester was just
departing to her own house. Nelly could hardly let her go. For a month
now, Hester had been with her at Torquay, while Bridget was pursuing
some fresh 'work' in London. And Nelly's desolate heart had found both
calm and bracing in Hester's tenderness. For the plain shapeless
spinster was one of those rare beings who in the Lampadephoria of life,
hand on the Lamp of Love, pure and undefiled, as they received it from
men and women, like themselves, now dead.

But Hester went at last, and Nelly was alone. The lake lay steeped in a
rich twilight, into which the stars were rising. The purple breast of
Silver How across the water breathed of shelter, of rest, of things
ineffable. Nelly's eyes were full of tears, and her hands clasped on her
breast scarcely kept down the sobbing. There, under the hands, was the
letter which George had written to her, the night before he left her.
She had been told of its existence within a few days of his
disappearance; and though she longed for it, a stubborn instinct had
bade her refuse to have it, refuse to open it. 'No!--I was only to open
it, if George was dead. And he is not dead!' And as time went on, it had
seemed to her for months, as if to open it, would be in some mysterious
way to seal his fate. But at last she had sent for it--at last she had
read it--with bitter tears.

She would wear no black for him--her lost lover. She told herself to
hope still. But she was, in truth, beginning to despair. And into her
veins, all unconsciously, as into those of the old brown earth, the
tides of youth, the will to live, were slowly, slowly, surging back.

CHAPTER X

'You have gone far enough,' said Cicely imperiously. 'I am going to take
you home.'

'Let me sit a little first. It's all so lovely. Nelly dropped into the
soft springy turf, dried by a mild east wind, and lay curled up under a
rock, every tremulous nerve in her still frail body played on by the
concert of earth and sky before her. It was May; the sky was china-blue,
and the clouds sailed white upon it. The hawthorns too