Audrey had never loved idleness, but now she loathed it; her girlish
employments no longer satisfied her. She made wider margins for her
activity, and schemed with an anxiety that looked like restlessness how
she might fill up the day.

Perhaps her happiest hours, after Mollie left her, were spent in the
Hillside nursery, playing with her baby-nephew. Geraldine noticed with
secret satisfaction that her boy was becoming an engrossing interest to
his young aunt.

'I am sure he knows you, Audrey,' she would say. 'Look how he stretches
out his dear little arms and coos to you to take him! Go to Aunt Audrey,
my precious!' and Geraldine would place him in her sister's arms as
though she loved to see them together.

Geraldine had certain fine instincts of her own. Her womanly intuition
told her that nothing could be more healing than the touch of those baby
fingers. When Audrey sat down opposite to her, with her nephew sprawling
on her lap, and kicking up his pink toes in a baby's aimless fashion,
her face always looked happier, and a more contented look came into her
eyes.

'You are very like your mother, Leonard,' she would say to him: 'but I
do not believe that you will ever be as handsome.'

Baby's gurgling answer was no doubt rich with infantile wisdom, if he
could only have couched it in mortal language. But, all the same, he was
fulfilling his mission. Audrey felt somehow as though things must come
right some day when baby gripped her finger and held it fast, or else
tangled her hair. 'You are a happy woman, Gage,' she said one day; but
she was a little sorry that she made the remark when Geraldine got up
quickly and kissed her, with tears in her eyes.

'You will be happy, too, some day, my darling,' she said very tenderly.
But to this Audrey made no reply.

Mollie was faithful to her compact, and did not write for three whole
weeks. The school had reassembled by that time, and a tall, pale young
man with spectacles filled Cyril's place at table. Audrey took very
little notice of him. When Michael was there, she talked to him; but she
found any conversation with the new-comer almost impossible.

'It hurts me to see him there,' she said once to her mother, and her lip
quivered as she spoke. And of course her mother understood her.

'Yes, dear, it is very hard; your father was only saying so last night.
I think he notices how silent you are at luncheon. Mr. Gisbourne is
certainly not prepossessing--not like our