nes.

"Then I suppose the balance of what your mother left you forms a little
addition to your pension, and to what poor Cecil was able to leave you?"

As the other hesitated, Miss Crofton went on, in a very friendly
tone:--"I hope you won't think it interfering that I should speak as I am
doing? I expected to find you much less comfortably circumstanced, and I
was going to propose that I should increase what I had feared would be a
very small income, by two hundred a year."

Enid was as much touched by this unexpected generosity as it was in
her to be, and it was with an accent of real sincerity that she
exclaimed:--"Oh, Alice, you _are_ kind! Of course two hundred a year
would be a _great_ help. Nothing remains of what my mother left me. But
you must not think that I'm extravagant. I sold a lot of things, and that
made it possible for me to take over The Trellis House exactly as you see
it. But even during the very few days I have been here I have begun to
find how expensive life can be, even in a village like this."

"All right," said Miss Crofton. She got up from her easy chair with a
quick movement, for she was still a vigorous woman. "Then that's settled!
I'll give you a cheque for L100 to-day--and one every six months as
long that is, as you're a widow." Then she smiled a little satirically,
for Enid had made a quick movement of recoil which Alice Crofton thought
rather absurd.

"It's early to think of such a thing, no doubt," she said coolly. "But
still, I shall be very much surprised, Enid, if you do not re-make your
life. I myself have a dear young friend, very little older than you are,
who has been married three times. The War has altered the views and
prejudices even of old-fashioned people."

"I want to ask you something," said Enid, "d'you think I ought to tell
people that I have already been married twice?"

Miss Crofton told herself quickly that such questions are always put with
a definite reason, and that she probably would not be called upon to pay
her sister-in-law's allowance for very long.

"I don't think you are in the least bound to tell anyone such a fact
about yourself, unless"--she hesitated,--"you were seriously thinking of
marrying again. In such a case as that I think you would be well advised,
Enid, to tell the man in question the fact before you become obliged to
reveal it to him."

There was a pause, and then Miss Crofton abruptly changed the subject by
saying something which