arm, _fretillante_, abandoned to
the lavish energy of growing things; beyond the discoloured wall of the
compound rose the tender cloud of a leafing tamarisk against the blue. A
long time already the driver had slept immovably, and the horse,
uncomplaining but uninterested, had dragged at the wisps of hay.

Inside there was no longer a hint of Mrs. Barberry, even a dropped
handkerchief agreeably scented. The night nurse had realised herself
equally superfluous and had gone, the other, a person of practical
views, could hardly retain her indignation at being kept from day to day
to see her patient fed and hand him books and writing materials. She had
not even the duty of debarring visitors, but sat most of the time in the
dressing-room, where echoes fell about her of the stories with which
riotous young men, in tea and wheat and jute, hastened Mr. Lindsay's
convalescence. There she tapped her energetic fat foot on the floor in
vain, to express her views upon such waste of scientific training. She
had Surgeon-Major Livingstone's orders, and he on this occasion had his
sister's.

There was an air of relief, of tension relaxed, between the two women in
the drawing-room; it was plain that Alicia had communicated these things
to her visitor, in their main import. Hilda was already half-disengaged
from the subject, her eye wandered as if in search for the avenue to
another. By a sudden inclination Alicia began the story of Laura Filbert
on her knees at Lindsay's door. She told it in a quiet, steady,
colourless way, pursuing it to the end--it came with the ease of
frequent private rehearsals--and then with her elbows on her knees and
her chin in her palms she stopped and gazed meditatively in front of
her. There was something in the gaze to which Hilda yielded an attention
unexpectedly serious, something of the absolute in character and life
impervious to her inquiry. Yet to analysis it was only the grey look of
eyes habited to regard the future with penetration and to find nothing
there.

"Have you told him?" Hilda asked after an instant's pause, during which
she conceded something, she hardly knew what; she meant to find out
later.

"I haven't seen him. But I will tell him, I promise you."

"I have no doubt you will! But don't promise _me_. I won't even witness
the vow!" Hilda cried.

"What does it matter? I shall certainly tell him." The words fell
definitely like pebbles. Hilda thoughtfully picked them up.

"On the