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Hadria had sprung up, and was standing, with flushed cheeks, beside her calmer companion. Professor Fortescue's voice broke the momentary silence. He gave a warm smile of pleasure and came forward with out-stretched hand. "The hoped-for instant has come sooner than I thought," he cried genially. Hadria was shocked to see him looking very ill.

He seemed to her lonely, and in need of the sort of comfort that he brought so liberally to others. Although he had talked to Hadria about a thousand topics in which they were both interested, there had been nothing personal in their conversation. He was disposed, at times, to treat her in a spirit of affectionate banter.

She stooped to take the child's hand. "You are most kind, but I could not think of troubling you any longer. I think of taking the little one myself. She will be a comfort to me, and will cheer my lonely home. And besides you see, duty, Mrs. Temperley, duty " Hadria caught her breath, and stopped short. "You are going to take her away from me? You are going to revenge yourself like that?"

You can help more than you dream, even as things stand. I cannot tell you what you have done for me, dear Hadria." Do not forget them; be to them a knight-errant. You have suffered enough yourself, to know well how to bind their wounds." The speaker paused, for a moment, to battle with a paroxysm of pain.

She was longing to urge her to leave Craddock Dene, but was deterred by the knowledge of the uselessness of such advice. Hadria could not take it. "I chafe against these situations!" cried Valeria. "I am so unused, in my own life, to such tethers and limitations. They would drive me crazy!" "Oh," Hadria exclaimed, with an amused smile, "this is a new cry!"

Hadria had characteristically left the paradox unjustified. "What do you mean?" asked Algitha. "Surely the enemy of good has most hold over the discontented spirit." Hadria likened the contented to stagnant pools, wherein corruptions grow apace. "It is only the discontented ocean that remains, for all its storms, fresh and sane to the end."

And where could I choose a sweeter spot for these late efforts to be young and green, than here in this perfect south of England home?" "It seems large," said Hadria. Professor Theobald grinned. "You don't appear to take a keen interest in my blossoming." Why in heaven's name should she?

The busy, loud-ticking clock was working on with cheerful unconcern, as if this were just like every other day whose passing moments it had registered. The hands were pointing towards seven, and the dinner hour was half-past seven. Hadria stood looking down at the sleeping child, her hands resting on the low rail of the cot.

But Henriette preferred to ignore that side of her experience. She murmured something about the maternal instinct, and its potency. "I don't deny the potency of the instinct," said Hadria, "but I do say that it is shamefully presumed upon. Strong it obviously must be, if industrious cultivation and encouragements and threats and exhortations can make it so!

In the evenings, the old couple liked to have a rubber, and often Hubert and Hadria would make up the necessary quartett; four silent human beings, who sat like solemn children at their portentous play, while the clock on the mantel-piece recorded the moments of their lives that they dedicated to the mimic battle. Hours and hours were spent in this way.